Unfortunately, Nageli failed to perceive the importance of what Mendel had found. He suggested that Mendel try breeding hawkweed. Mendel obediently did as Nageli suggested, but quickly realized that hawkweed had none of the requisite features for studying heritability. It was evident to him that Nageli had not read the paper closely, or possibly at all. Frustrated, Mendel retired from investigating heritability and spent the rest of his life growing outstanding vegetables and studying bees, mice, and sunspots, among much else. Eventually he was made abbot.
不幸的是，耐格里沒有意識到孟德爾的發(fā)現(xiàn)的重要性，他建議孟德爾培育山柳屬科植物。孟德爾按照他所說的去做了，但很快發(fā)現(xiàn)山柳屬植物并不具備研究遺傳性所必不可缺的特點。很明顯，耐格里并未認(rèn)真閱讀他的論文，甚至可能根本沒有讀。灰心喪氣的孟德爾從此放棄了遺傳性研究，在他的余生中轉(zhuǎn)而種植良種蔬菜，從事蜜蜂、老鼠、太陽黑子之類別的研究。最后他被推選為修道院院長。
Mendel's findings weren't quite as widely ignored as is sometimes suggested. His study received a glowing entry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica — then a more leading record of scientific thought than now — and was cited repeatedly in an important paper by the German Wilhelm Olbers Focke. Indeed, it was because Mendel's ideas never entirely sank below the waterline of scientific thought that they were so easily recovered when the world was ready for them.
孟德爾的發(fā)現(xiàn)并未像有時候被認(rèn)為的完全被大家疏忽。他的研究成果被光榮地收入《大英百科全書》中——當(dāng)時是一部記錄科學(xué)思想的著作，其重要性遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超過它在今天的地位，并且在德國威廉·奧伯斯·?？怂珜懙囊黄匾撐睦锉灰辉僖谩嶋H上，由于孟德爾的觀點一直未曾沉沒在科學(xué)思想的汪洋大海之中，因此。當(dāng)世界具備了接受它們的條件時，它們就很容易地被人們重新發(fā)現(xiàn)。
Together, without realizing it, Darwin and Mendel laid the groundwork for all of life sciences in the twentieth century. Darwin saw that all living things are connected, that ultimately they "trace their ancestry to a single, common source," while Mendel's work provided the mechanism to explain how that could happen. The two men could easily have helped each other. Mendel owned a German edition of the Origin of Species, which he is known to have read, so he must have realized the applicability of his work to Darwin's, yet he appears to have made no effort to get in touch.
達(dá)爾文和孟德爾一起為20世紀(jì)的全部生命科學(xué)奠定了基礎(chǔ)，不過他們兩個都沒有意識到這一點。達(dá)爾文發(fā)現(xiàn)所有的生物都是相互關(guān)聯(lián)的，并且它們說到底都“源自一個共同的祖先”；而孟德爾的工作則從機制上為這一切是怎么發(fā)生的提供了解釋。他們兩個人本來可以相互幫助。孟德爾擁有一本德文版的《物種起源》，據(jù)說他讀過這本書，因此他一定意識到他的工作適用于達(dá)爾文的理論，但是他似乎并沒有想辦法和達(dá)爾文聯(lián)系過。
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