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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
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