This passage was written by Dr. James Deane for the October 1844 issue of American Journal of Science in an article entitled "Answer to the 'Rejoinder' by Professor Hitchcock." It was just one part of a protracted back-and-forth between Deane and Hitchcock that played out in the pages of this journal.
Although it is now nearly ten years since this letter has been written, its content is vivid in my memory. . . . In a letter dated September 15th, 1835, [Hitchcock] informed me that in a paper he was about to publish, he should not fail to acknowledge his indebtedness to me for the first discovery. The performance of this pledge consisted in the remark, that "his attention was first called to the subject" by me, but no mention whatever was made of my relations to the discovery. . . .
The grand results of the researches of Mr. H. were published in his Final Report to the Legislature of Massachusetts, which professedly embodied all facts related to the subject, up to the time of its publication in 1841, yet no allusions are made to the foregoing correspondence; every fact associated with my labors has been omitted. The only mention of me in this voluminous essay, is in the description of the original slabs, as having been "pointed out" by me to him, and in dedicating a particular variety to my name as a testimony of respect for having "first called his attention" to the subject of fossil footmarks. I felt the coldness of these ambiguous compliments . . . yet I did not complain.
Dr. James Deane, from a letter published in the American Journal of Science, Volume XXXI, October, 1844.