CHAPTER III 



Mendel's law op heredity 



GREGOR JOHANN MENDEL was a 

 teacher of the physical and natural 

 I sciences in a monastic school at Briinn, 

 Austria, in the second half of the last cen- 

 tury. He was, therefore, a contemporary of 

 Darwin, but unknown to him as to nearly 

 all the great naturalists of the period. Al- 

 though not famous in his lifetime, it is clear 

 to us that he possessed an analytical mind 

 of the first order, which enabled him to plan 

 and carry through successfully the most origi- 

 nal and instructive series of studies in hered- 

 ity ever executed. The material which he used 

 was simple. It consisted of garden-peas, which 

 he raised in the garden of the monastery. 

 The conclusions which he reached were like- 

 wise simple. He summed them up, the results 

 of eight years of arduous work, in a brief 

 paper published in the proceedings of the local 



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