CHAPTER IV 



MENDEL AND HIS GARDEN PEAS 



Those who watched the man must have wondered what 

 possessed him. Every day they saw him in the gardens of the 



cloister there in Briinn, 

 Austria, and every day 

 they noticed that, al- 

 though he was a teacher 

 of science, he worked like 

 a trained gardener over 

 his growing pea vines. 

 Moreover, strange to say, 

 he did not seem to care 

 so much about the flowers 

 on the vines as about the 

 shape and the color of the 

 seeds and the seed pods. 

 In the course of time 

 the neighbors learned that 

 the teacher's name was 

 Mendel, 1 and that alto- 

 gether he had twenty-two 



different kinds of peas under cultivation. Probably they did 

 not know that he was searching day and night for laws of 



1 Gregor Johann Mendel was born in Heinzendorf, Austria, in 1822. 

 He was always a faithful student, and became a priest in Briinn, Austria, 

 in 1847. In J 868 he was appointed abbot of the Konigskloster, where he 

 had been priest. 



20 



GREGOR JOHANN MENDEL 



