CHARACTERS IN HEREDITY 145 



since Darwin's time, that we are coming to re- 

 gard it as the cornerstone of our knowledge of 

 heredity. 



The romantic story of Gregor Mendel is 

 known to you, how toiling long years in obscurity 

 hybridizing garden-peas, he made a great dis- 

 covery only to see it scarce noticed and soon 

 forgotten. He himself, meanwhile, called to ad- 

 minister the affairs of an ecclesiastical establish- 

 ment, was forced to relinquish his favorite pur- 

 suit of scientific investigation, and was thus 

 unable to follow up his great discovery and force 

 it upon the attention of scientists. So he died 

 unhonored by his fellow-scientists and all but 

 unknown to them. 



The story of how, a generation later, Mendel's 

 law was rediscovered thrice over is scarcely less 

 romantic. That the rediscoverers, having first 

 established the law independently and then hav- 

 ing discovered Mendel, should assign the honor 

 unreservedly to the obscure and forgotten Abbot 

 of Briinn, is a circumstance which should cause 

 us long to remember and honor the names of De 

 Vries, Correns, and Tschermak. 



According to Darwin's pangenesis theory, the 

 reproductive cell is made up of minute units de- 

 rived from and representing each part or organ 

 of the entire body. A few critical experiments 

 instituted by Galton showed this theory to be 

 untenable, and they seem to have involved in 

 public esteem an adverse decision against all less 



