The other subject in which Mendel interested himself was meteorology. He published in the journal of the Brünn Society of Naturalists a series of statistical observations with regard to the weather. Besides this he organized in connexion with the Realschule in Brünn 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 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.]