Page:Mendel's principles of heredity; a defence.pdf/56

 As some biographical particulars of this remarkable investigator will be welcome, I give the following brief notice, first published by Dr Correns on the authority of Dr von Schanz: Gregor Johann Mendel was born on July 22, 1822, at Heinzendorf bei Odrau, in Austrian Silesia. He was the son of well-to-do peasants. In 1843 he entered as a novice the "Königinkloster," an Augustinian foundation in Altbrünn. In 1847 he was ordained priest. From 1851 to 1853 he studied physics and natural science at Vienna. Thence he returned to his cloister and became a teacher in the Realschule at Brünn. Subsequently he was made Abbot, and died January 6, 1884. The experiments described in his papers were carried out in the garden of his Cloister. Besides the two papers on hybridisation, dealing respectively with Pisum and Hieracium, Mendel contributed two brief notes to the ''Verh. Zool. bot. Verein, Wien, on Scopolia margaritalis (1853, ., p. 116) and on Bruchus pisi'' (ibid. 1854, ., p. 27). In these papers he speaks of himself as a pupil of Kollar.

Mendel published in the Brünn journal statistical observations of a meteorological character, but, so far as I am aware, no others relating to natural history. Dr Correns tells me that in the latter part of his life he engaged in the Ultramontane Controversy. He was for a time President of the Brünn Society.

For the photograph of Mendel which forms the frontispiece to this work, I am indebted to the Very Rev. Dr Janeischek, the present Abbot of Brünn, who most kindly supplied it for this purpose.

So far as I have discovered there was, up to 1900, only one reference to Mendel's observations in scientific literature, namely that of Focke, Pflanzenmischlinge, 1881, p. 109,