86 REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS 
sun-spots interesting him greatly. He is also known to have carried on 
experiments with bees, but their record, if ever written, has been lost; so 
that besides these two “Communications”? and some “ Meteorological | 
Observations,’ Mendel (as far as is known) only published two other brief 
Notes, one on Scopolia margaritalis, and the other on Bruchus Pisi. 
He died at Briinn on January 6, 1884, practically unknown to the world, 
and it was not till 1900—sixteen years after his death—that his brilliant 
discoveries and patient work came to be known to science, and as soon as 
known appreciated. From 1866 to 1900 there is, as far as can be dis- 
covered, only one single passing mention of Mendel’s. work, and. that 
without any suspicion, cayeenie of its enormous value and importance, 
This total lack of appreciation is not easy to account for. _Mendel’s work 
was known to Carl Nigeli (to whom he wrote a series of letters) and to 
Focke, but they seem to have been unable to perceive the magnitude and 
far-reaching results of his discoveries. And this is the more surprising 
because during the latter half of the nineteenth century biologists, aroused 
by Darwin’s work, were putting forth a multitude of theories to account 
for the observed facts of Heredity and Variation, and, as Mr. Hurst has 
so well expressed it, ‘Theories there were in plenty, but not one law”’; 
and yet, had they only known it, the “latv’’ which they one and all so 
sorely needed for their direction and guidance had been long discovered, 
and lay unutilised in the Journal of the Natural History Society of Brinn. 
It is almost.a commonplace to say that patient workers in science, and 
benefactors who are in advance of the times in which they live, must not 
expect much recognition; but seldom, if ever, in the world’s history has 
there been so striking an example of its truth as in the case of Gregor 
Johann Mendel. And the story of the independent and almost simul- 
taneous discovery and experimental confirmation of his work, by De Vries 
in Holland, Correns in Germany, Tschermak in Austria, and the publica- 
tion of a translation of his original “Communication” by our Society, 
reads like a romance. 
It was the very simplicity of his experiments that Doonan him success, 
He confined himself to one single plant, the edible Pea, but used large 
numbers of that plant, and followed their behaviour through many 
generations, thus reducing his liability to error toa minimum. And not 
only did he confine himself to one single plant, but he followed and 
kept exact record of its simplest characters—such as “ round or wrinkled 
seeds,’ “yellow or green seed leaves,’ “purple or white flowers,” “ tall 
or dwarf stems,’ and so on—and the observation and record of each of 
these pairs of simple characters was kept singly—independently of all 
the others. He cross-fertilised his peas once, and then, generation after 
generation, noted the result separately for each pair of characters. 
- For example, he took yellow-seeded peas which in previous generations 
had come true to type, and, similarly pure, green-seeded; sowed them, 
and fertilised the green with pollen from the yellow, and the yellow with 
pollen from the green. And he found that it mattered not which was— 
the pollen-bearing plant or which the seed-bearer, the resulting seeds were 
in either case all yellow. He therefore called the colour yellow the 
dominant colour and green the recessive—because it. receded from 
sight for one generation at least. 
