CHAPTER II 



HISTORICAL 



To Gregor Mendel, monk and abbot, belongs the 

 credit of founding the modern science of heredity. 

 Through him there was brought into these problems 

 an entirely new idea, an entirely fresh conception 

 of the nature of living things. Born in 1822 of 

 Austro-Silesian parentage, he early entered the 

 monastery of Briinn, and there, in the seclusion 

 of the cloister garden, he carried out with the common 

 pea the series of experiments which has since become 

 so famous. In 1865, after eight years' work, he 

 published the results of his experiments in the 

 Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Briinn^ 

 in a brief paper of some forty pages. But brief as 

 it is, the importance of the results and the lucidity 

 of the exposition will always give it high rank 

 among the classics of biological literature. For 

 thirty-five years Mendel's paper remained unknown, 

 and it was not until 1900 that it was simultaneously 

 discovered by several distinguished botanists. The 

 causes of this curious neglect are not altogether 

 without interest. Hybridisation experiments before 

 Mendel there had been in plenty. The classificatory 

 work of Linnaeus in the latter half of the eighteenth 



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