REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS, 85 
GREGOR JOHANN MENDEL. 
By THe Epiror. 
As this Report of the third Conference on Genetics will be read by many 
who either were not Fellows of our Society seven years ago, when we first 
published a translation of Mendel’s remarkable “ Kxperiments in Plant 
Hybridisation,” or, if Fellows then, took but little interest in his work, 
which up to that time had attracted so little notice among even scientific 
circles as to be practically unknown, it may be as well to preface the 
Report of this Conference with a very brief account of Mendel and his 
work. And of his work I wish to speak in such popular language as may 
enable even an unscientific mind like my own to grasp the fundamental 
law which he discovered and used as a basis on which to build up the 
other conclusions at which he arrived. 
Gregor Johann Mendel was born on July 22, 1822, at Heizendorf bei 
Odrau, in Austrian Silesia, his father being one of the smaller 
peasant-farmers of the district. In 1848 Mendel became a novice in 
an Augustinian foundation known as the Koniginkloster, at Alt-Brunn, 
and four years later was ordained a priest. In 1851 he moved to Vienna, 
and spent three years there, studying physics and natural science. In 
1853 he returned to the Cloister in Brinn, and was appointed to a master- 
ship in the Realschule of that town. It was probably during his sojourn 
at Vienna that he became interested in the problems of hybridisation, for 
on his return to Briinn he at once began, in the gardens of the Cloister, 
that remarkable series of experiments with the common edible Pea 
(Pisum sativum) for which his name has now become world-famous. 
His work was difficult and, popularly speaking, most uninteresting, except 
for the fact that he possessed the almost prophetic perception that a 
general fundamental law (or laws) governing the results of cross-breeding 
might be thereby discovered. For more than ten long years he worked 
at his “dry ’’ subject, and in 1865 he announced the results of it to the 
Society of Naturalists at Briinn, and his “ Communication ” was published 
in that society's Journal the next year. He does not seem to have 
rested content with this, but renewed his investigations, using this time 
Hieracium, Lychnis, and some of the common thistles. In 1869 he 
communicated to the Briinn Society a preliminary notice of his Hieraciwm 
experiments, and, being about this time appointed Abbot of his Cloister, 
he hoped, as he says in a letter to Nigeli (of which we give a facsimile 
with translation on pp. 88-89), to have had more time to give to his ex- 
periments, but for some reason or other this hope does not appear to 
have been realised, and he does not seem to have had opportunity to 
finish and elaborate his later investigations and discoveries. 
It must not, however, for a moment be supposed that Mendel was 
a man of only one idea. On the contrary, his interests were very wide 
and varied. Meteorology was a favourite study, the various theories of 
