Reprinted from The Antiochian Vol. 2, No. 8, June 1912 



A PILGRIMAGE TO BRtJNN 



By Dr. George H. Shull (B. S., Antioch, 1901) 



Station for Experimental Evolution, of the Carnegie Institution 



of Washington, Cold Spring Harbor, L. I. 



Before me on the wall of my study hangs a little clock of old- 

 fashioned design, its three-inch enameled dial set in a small square 

 of pressed brass borne .on a single ebonized stave, the pendulum 

 and cylindrical brass weights attached to long, thin cords hanging 

 free below. A visitor's attention is at once arrested by this 'clock 

 because its design is unlike that of any modern American time- 

 piece, and because its very simplicity and unpretentiousness sug- 

 gests that it must have a history. 



This rather obvious" inference is correct, for this little clock 

 once hung on the chamber wall of a man to whose memory the 

 scientific men of all nations joined in 1910 in erecting a beautiful 

 white marble statue in Briinn, Austria, the capital city of the prov- 

 ince of Moravia. This man .was Johann Gregor Mendel, an Augus- 

 tinian monk, Abbot of the old Monastery or "Konigskloster" of 

 Briinn, who, by a careful study of garden peas during eight years, 

 discovered the key to the age-long riddle of heredity; and this little 

 clock is a memento of my visit to Briinn, given to me by the present 

 Abbot, Mendel's successor, Father Salesius Barcina (pronounced 

 Barsena). . 



