xni PLANT-BKEEDING 159 



country folk, so that from boyhood he was probably 

 interested in country things. But he was a clever 

 boy, and as his parents were not poor, it was 

 decided he should go into the Church. He studied 

 science at Vienna, and afterwards became Abbot of 

 Brlinn, a town in Moravia in Austria. 



Though he did some teaching at one time, we 

 must suppose that Mendel had a good deal of 

 leisure, and his monastery had evidently a large 

 garden. He was especially interested in crossing, 

 and what he wanted to find out was exactly what 

 happened when plants were crossed. 



We have already spoken of the meaning of 

 crossing in a general way. Let us note just what 

 it means in the case of one particular plant. We 

 may find in a garden tall peas, which need to be 

 sticked, and short peas, or dwarfs, which do not 

 need to be sticked. Each pea-flower, whether borne 

 on' tall or dwarf peas, contains both stamens, or 

 pollen-containing organs, and a seed-pod. Usually 

 the pollen from these stamens falls upon the seed- 

 pod of the same flower. That is, the flower is what 

 is called self -fertilised. But suppose we take away 

 all the stamens from the flower of a dwarf pea, and 

 drop carefully on the top of the seed-pod some 

 pollen from the flower of a tall pea, then we may 

 say that we have crossed the dwarf pea and the 

 tall pea. 



