ABSTRACT
The Royal Horticultural Society of London was an unlikely venue for a scientific meeting, although many eminent scientists such as Francis Galton were invited as guests to their conferences. The society was founded in 1804, the earliest of such societies in the world; however, it had very little scientific influence compared to the Royal Society or the British Association. Gregor Mendel, however, did a much better job than what Galton and Charles Darwin together had ever done. Galton generously paid tribute to Mendel in his Memories of My Life published in 1908 well after Mendel's views had become generally accepted. Darwin rejected Galton's ideas because they did not fit in with his idea of multiple gemmules originating from all the bodily parts. The tests to demonstrate these gemmules would be the grafting experiments; doing crosses and backcrosses of plants or animals would be next to useless according to Darwin.
