, TRANSACTIONS OF WAGNER 



46 



^ MENDEL AND HIS LAW 



del's paper, published in 1866. De Vries at once recognized the importance of 

 the paper, and made known to the world the result of the work of the modest 

 Abbot of Briinn, who had died eighteen years before. 



Mendel, in the quiet little cloister garden of the monastery of Briinn, began 

 work with common peas, work that was so patiently continued and so carefully 

 done that the results he obtained gave him a fundamental law which in time 

 to come will probably stand with students of heredity as Kepler's laws stand 

 with astronomers. The work required just such careful, patient, long-con- 

 tinued effort as the monk could easily make. Certainly it did not interfere 

 with his duties enough to prevent his becoming in later hfe the abbot of the 

 monastery. Mendel had studied botany under Kolreuter, and to him he 

 naturally turned with the result of his discovery. For some unforeseen reason 

 this then famous botanist apparently paid no attention to his communication, 

 and the world, which should have known, was left ignorant of the important 

 discovery. Instead, Mendel read his paper before the httle Society of Nat- 

 uralists in his home town. The report of it occupies forty-four pages of the 

 volume of Proceedings printed in 1866. Mendel attacked the problem of crossing 

 plants from a side which had not yet been touched. 



The pecuHarity of his process consisted in the fact that he began by cross- 

 ing plants which varied only in one striking particular, and then paid attention 

 only to the effect of the crossing upon that particular quality. For the ex- 

 periment which he wished to make it was necessary that he should have a plant 

 that, in the first place, would breed pure, that is, produce only its own like. 

 Second, it must fertihze itself successfully and yet be able to be cross-fertilized 

 by hand, and in the third place, its hybrids must be fertile, which is not often 

 the case. He found that garden peas answered all these qualifications better 

 than anything else he could find. Accordingly, he sent to dealers in garden 

 seeds and gathered a considerable number of varieties of peas. He bred each 

 of these long enough to see which of them could absolutely hand to their off- 

 spring quahties always resembhng those of the parents. From these he selected 

 the peas he wanted for his purpose. One of the striking differences among 

 his peas lay in the shape of the pea itself when it was ripe in the pod. Some 

 peas were always plump and round, others, no matter how long they were 

 allowed to mature, were always wrinkled. Each of these always handed its 

 quality in this respect to all its offspring. The round pea, planted, grew up 

 into a bush on which every pea was round. The wrinkled pea, on the other 



