The man evidently had a genius for scientific observations. His personal character was of the highest. The fact that his fellow-monks selected him as abbot of the monastery shows the consideration in which he was held for tact and true religious feeling. There are many still alive in Brünn who remember him well and cannot say enough of his kindly disposition, the fröliche Liebenswürdigkeit (which means even more than our personal magnetism), that won for him respect and reverence from all. He is remembered, not only for his successful discoveries, and not alone by his friends and the fellow-members of the Naturalist Society, but by practically all his [{205}] contemporaries in the town; and it is his lovable personal character that seems to have most impressed itself on them.
He was for a time the president of the Brünn Society of Naturalists, while also abbot of the monastery. This is, perhaps, a combination that would strike English-speaking people as rather curious, but seems to have been considered not out of the regular course of events in Austria.
Father Mendel's introduction to his paper on plant hybridization, which describes the result of the experiments made by him in deducing the law which he announces, is a model of simple straightforwardness. It breathes the spirit of the loftiest science in its clear-eyed vision of the nature of the problem he had to solve, the factors which make up the problem, and the experimental observations necessary to elucidate it. We reproduce the introductory remarks here from the translations made of them by the Royal Horticultural Society of England. [Footnote 16] Father Mendel said at the beginning of his paper as read 8 February, 1865:--
[Footnote 16: The original paper was published in the "Verhandlungen des Naturforscher-Vereins," in Brünn, Abhandlungen, iv, that is, the proceedings of the year 1865, which were published in 1866. Copies of these transactions were exchanged with all the important scientific journals, especially those in connexion with important societies and universities throughout Europe, and the wonder is that this paper attracted so little attention.]
Experience of artificial fertilization such as is affected with ornamental plants in order to obtain new variations in color, has led to the experiments, the [{206}] details of which I am about to discuss. The striking regularity with which the same hybrid forms always reappeared whenever fertilization took place between the same species, induced further experiments to be undertaken, the object of which was to follow up the developments of the hybrid in a number of successive generations of their progeny.
Those who survey the work that has been done in this department up to the present time will arrive at the conviction that among all the numerous experiments made not one has been carried out to such an extent and in such a way as to make it possible to determine the number of different forms under which the offspring of hybrids appear, or to arrange these forms with certainty, according to their separate generations, or to ascertain definitely their statistical relations.
These three primary necessities for the solution of the problem of heredity--namely, first, the number of different forms under which the offspring of hybrids appear; secondly, the arrangement of these forms, with definiteness and certainty, as regards their relations in the separate generation; and thirdly, the statistical results of the hybridization of the plants in successive generations, are the secret of the success of Mendel's work, as has been very well said by Bateson, in commenting on this paragraph in his work on Mendel's "Principles of Heredity." This was the first time that any one had ever realized exactly the nature of the problems presented in, their naked simplicity. "To see a problem well is more than half to solve it," and this proved to be the case with Mendel's straightforward vision of the nature of the experiments required for advance in our knowledge of heredity.
While Mendel was beginning his experiments almost absolutely under the guidance of his own scientific spirit, and undertaking his series of observations in the monastery garden without any reference to other work in this line, he knew very well what distinguished botanists were doing in this line and was by no means presumptuously following a study of the deepest of nature's problems without knowing what others had accomplished in the matter in recent years. In the second paragraph of his introduction he quotes the men whose work in this science was attracting attention, and says that to this object numerous careful observers, such a Kölreuter, Gärtner, Herbert, Lecoq, Wichura and others, had devoted a part of their lives with inexhaustible perseverance.
To quote Mendel's own words:--
Gärtner, especially in his work, "Die Bastarderzeugung im Pflanzenreiche," [Footnote 17] has recorded very valuable observations; and quite recently Wichura published the results of some profound observations on the hybrids of the willow. That so far no generally applicable law governing the formation and development of hybrids has been successfully formulated can hardly be wondered at by anyone who is acquainted with the extent of the task and can appreciate the difficulties with which experiments of this class have to contend. A final decision can only be arrived at when we shall have before us the results of the changed detailed experiments made on plants belonging to the most diverse orders. It requires some courage indeed to undertake a labor of such far-reaching extent; it appears, however, to be the only right way by which we can finally reach the solution of a question the importance of which can not be overestimated in connexion with the history of the evolution of organic forms.
The paper now presented records the results of such a detailed experiment. This experiment was practically confined to a small plant group, and is now after eight years' pursuit concluded in all essentials. Whether the plan upon which the separate experiments were conducted and carried out was the best suited to attain the desired end is left to the friendly decision of the reader.