ofessor Pettenkofer and the Munich School of
Hygiene for many years--and weather observations. At that time
Pettenkofer, the most widely known of sanitary scientists, thought
that he was able to show that the curve of frequency of typhoid fever
in the different seasons of the year depended upon the closeness with
which the ground-water came to the surface. Authorities in hygiene
generally do not now accept this supposed law, for other factors have
been found which are so much more important that, if the ground-water
has any influence, it can be neglected. Mendel's observations in the
matter {204} were, however, in line with the scientific ideas of the
time and undoubtedly must be considered of value.

The other subject in which Mendel interested himself was meteorology.
He published in the journal of the Bruenn Society of Naturalists a
series of statistical observations with regard to the weather. Besides
this he organized in connexion with the Realschule in Bruenn a series
of observation stations in different parts of the country around; and
at the time when most scientists considered meteorological problems to
be too complex for hopeful solution, Mendel seems to have realized
that the questions involved depended rather on the collation of a
sufficient number of observations and the deduction of definite laws
from them than on any theoretic principles of a supposed science of
the weather.

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 Bruenn who remember him well and cannot say enough of
his kindly disposition, the _froeliche Liebenswuerdigkeit_ (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 Bruenn 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