CHAPTER VII 



THE PIONEER PLANT HYBRIDIZERS: THE DISCOVERY 

 AND REDISCOVERY OF MENDEL'S^^AW 



While De Vries was engaged in his studies of the evening 

 primrose he hit upon an idea far more important, as most 

 biologists now beheve, than the idea of mutation, though 

 De Vries himself both then and since has seemed to regard 

 it as of only minor importance. He called this the " law of 

 the splitting of hybrids." The same law, it is claimed, was 

 independently discovered about the same time by two other 

 botanists, Correns in Germany, and Tschermak in Austria. 

 Further, historical investigations made by De Vries showed 

 that the same law had been discovered and clearly stated 

 many years previously by an obscure naturalist of Briinn, 

 Austria, named Gregor Mendel, and we have now come to 

 call this law by his name, Mendel's law. Mendel was so little 

 known when his discovery was published that it attracted 

 little attention from scientists and was soon forgotten, only 

 to be unearthed and duly honored years after the death of its 

 author. Had Mendel lived forty years later than he did, he 

 would doubtless have been a devotee of biometry, for he had 

 a mathematical type of mind and his discovery of a law of 

 hybridization was due to the fact that he applied to his 

 biological studies methods of numerical exactness which he 

 had learned from algebra and physics. In biology he was an 

 amateur, being a teacher of the physical and natural sciences 

 in a monastic school at Briinn. Later he became head of his 

 monastery and gave up scientific work, partly because of 

 other duties, partly because of failing eyesight. 



The subject of plant hybridization had received consider- 

 able attention from botanists for a century before it was 

 taken up by Mendel and the law of the splitting of hybrids 

 which was discovered by Mendel and rediscovered by De 



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