CHAPTER II 



HISTORICAL 

 \ 



To Gregor Mendel, monk and abbot, belongs the credit 

 of founding the modern science of heredity. Through 

 him there was brought into these problems an entirely 

 new idea, an entirely fresh conception of the nature of 

 Uving things. Born in 1822 of Austro-Silesian parentage, 

 he early entered the monastery of Briinn, and there in the 

 seclusion of the cloister garden he carried out with the 

 common pea the series of experiments which has since 

 become so famous. In 1865 after eight years' work he 

 published the results of his experiments in the Proceedings 

 of the Natural History Society of Briinn, in a brief paper 

 of some forty pages. But brief as it is the importance of 

 the results and the lucidity of the exposition will always 

 give it high rank among the classics of biological Htera- 

 ture. For thirty-five years Mendel's paper remained 

 unknown, and it was not until 1900 that it was simulta- 

 neously discovered by several distinguished botanists. 

 The causes of this curious neglect are not altogether with- 

 out interest. Hybridisation experiments before Mendel 

 there had been in plenty. The classificatory work of Lin- 



