190 MENDELISM 
him in the Transactions of the Brunn Natural History 
Society in 1866. By some extraordinary chance 
Mendel’s paper was entirely lost sight of until the 
same facts were independently rediscovered in 1899 
by de Vries working in Holland, by Correns in Germany, 
and by Tschermak in Austria. 
Gregor Johann Mendel was born on July 22, 1822, 
at Heinzendorf, near Odrau, in Austrian Silesia. In 
1843 he entered as a novice the Augustine Convent at 
Altbrunn, and was ordained priest in 1847. 
Mendel was a teacher of natural science in the Brunn 
Realschule from 1853 to 1868, when he was appointed 
Abbot of his monastery. During this time he was 
largely occupied with experiments in cross-breeding a 
great variety of plants, and some idea of his activity 
in this line of scientific work is to be gathered from a 
perusal of his letters to the German biologist Nageli, 
a correspondence which has recently been published 
by Professor Correns. Mendel himself only published 
the result of his work with peas, and that of a few of 
his experiments with Hieracium. 
After 1873 the cares associated with the position of 
Abbot of Brunn appear to have prevented further 
biological work. His death took place in 1884, two 
years after that of Charles Darwin, to whom Mendel 
was thirteen years junior. 
Mendel’s own experiments—that is to say, the 
chief ones published by him—were made with peas, a 
kind of plants which were found to be remarkably 
well suited to this kind of work. Seven pairs of 
characters in these plants were found to behave in 
