New Haven Octobr 30, 1843
My dear sir,
I have reflected with much pleasure upon my short but most agreeable visit at your house and have held up your family as a model of a well ordered & happy Christian domestic circle. We shall be happy to reciprocate your hospitality whenever you & your excellent lady or any of your family can visit us.
As a new No of the Am. Jour. is now begun, I am led to think of your reclamation, & all I intended by leaving it with you was to give you an opportunity for full reconsideration with the aid of those early letters (yours & mine) to Dr Deane which I placed in your hands & which you can return to Dr D_ when you have done with them. My attention is just now again called to the subject by a letter of Dr Deane received last week containing not any allusions to things that are past but informing me that he is preparing a new commr (a short one) for the Journal containing a description, with lithographs, of the impressions lately discovered by him, those which you & I have seen at Greenfield. To this publication I suppose you can have no objection, & I will ask Dr D_ to send you a proof of it when set up, as I will take care to send him 2 duplicates & it may be more proper for him than for me to send you proofs before the article appears in January.
Benjamin Silliman informs Edward Hitchcock that James Deane intends to submit to The American Journal of Science an article about the tracks he discovered in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and Silliman has asked Deane to send a proof of his article to Hitchcock. He continues with, "We wish you to be entirely satisfied in the vindication of your claims and you shall have your own way of doing it. I am willing also to make my own amends, as it appears to me upon examining again my language in the address at Boston, that its language may not have been sufficiently guarded although it was fully my intention to do you justice & to give you distinguished honor." Silliman asks for permission to show Deane a proof of what Hitchcock writes before it is published so that he will have an idea ahead of time of Hitchcock's thoughts. Silliman also mentions that financial support for his journal is dangerously low and he admires Hitchcock's collection of tracks.