Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  ) 
February,  1915.  j 
A  Pilgrimage  to  Briinn. 
69 
A  PILGRIMAGE  TO  BRUNN.1 
By  Dr.  George  H.  Shull,  Station  for  Experimental  Evolution,  of  the  Carnegie 
Institution  of  Washington,  Cold  Spring  Harbor,  L.  I. 
Before  me  on  the  wall  of  my  study  hangs  a  little  clock  of  old- 
fashioned  design,  its  three-inch  enamelled  dial  set  in  a  small  square 
of  pressed  brass  borne  on  a  single  ebonized  stave,  the  pendulum 
and  cylindrical  brass  weights  attached  to  long,  thin  cords  hanging 
free  below.  A  visitor's  attention  is  at  once  arrested  by  this  clock 
because  its  design  is  unlike  that  of  any  modern  American  time- 
piece, and  because  its  very  simplicity  and  unpretentiousness  sug- 
gest that  it  must  have  a  history. 
This  rather  obvious  inference  is  correct,  for  this  little  clock 
once  hung  on  the  chamber  wall  of  a  man  to  whose  memory  the 
scientific  men  of  all  nations  joined,  in  19 10,  in  erecting  a  beautiful 
white  marble  statue  in  Briinn,  Austria,  the  capital  city  of  the  prov- 
ince of  Moravia.  This  man  was  Johann  Gregor  Mendel,  an  Augus- 
tinian  monk,  abbot  of  the  old  Monastery  or  "  Konigskloster "  of 
Briinn,  who,  by  a  careful  study  of  garden  peas  during  eight  years, 
discovered  the  key  to  the  age-long  riddle  of  heredity ;  and  this  little 
clock  is  a  memento  of  my  visit  to  Briinn,  given  to  me  by  the  present 
abbot,  Mendel's  successor,  Father  Salesius  Barcina  (pronounced 
Barsena). 
The  life  of  Mendel  presents  one  of  the  tragic  romances  in  scien- 
tific history,  for,  after  making  his  great  discovery  and  after  pub- 
lishing in  the  archives  of  the  local  scientific  society  a  complete  dis- 
cussion of  those  laws  of  heredity  which  are  now  known  as  Mendel's 
laws,  his  paper  lay  for  more  than  thirty  years  unknown  to  those  who 
were  sufficiently  interested  in  Jhe  study  of  heredity  and  evolution 
to  have  appreciated  their  value  and  to  have  extended  their  applica- 
bility throughout  the  entire  universe  of  plants  and  animals,  includ- 
ing man,  as  has  been  done  in  the  most  complete  manner  during  the 
last  twelve  years.  Long  after  the  patient,  industrious,  clear-sighted 
investigator  had  passed  away  in  obscurity,  three  other  men,  working 
independently,  simultaneously  rediscovered  the  same  laws,  and, 
fortunately  for  the  cause  of  justice,  at  the  same  time  discovered  and 
brought  from  its  obscure  hiding  place  Mendel's  forgotten  memoir. 
Thus  it  is  that  the  only  real  laws  of  heredity  yet  known  bear  the 
1  Reprinted  from  The  Antiochian,  vol.  2,  No.  8. 
