Some Laws of Heredity 31 



Breeders have known that stock must be kept 

 pure to maintain its valuable characters, but 

 new combinations of desirable qualities have 

 been achieved by chance rather than by skill. 

 It is only within this century that our knowl- 

 edge of heredity has advanced from such hazy 

 notions to the rudiments of the laws that govern 

 the complicated phenomena. 



In the middle of the last century an Austrian 

 monk named Gregor Mendel, teacher of science 

 in a monastic school at Briinn, became imbued 

 with the idea that mankind must have some 

 definite knowledge of the laws of heredity as a 

 working basis for the improvement of grains 

 and fruits, of the breeds of cattle, and even of 

 human kind. He decided to experiment with 

 garden peas in an endeavor to ascertain these 

 laws. He was measurably successful and 

 described his results in the Proceedings of the 

 Scientific Society of Briinn (1866). The paper 

 attracted no immediate attention in the scien- 

 tific world, for the volume in which it was 

 published was rather obscure and biologists 

 were just then absorbed in Darwin's startling 



