James Deane, an American physician, born in Coleraine, Mass., Feb. 14, 1801, died in Greenfield, June 8, 1858. He removed to Greenfield in 1822, where, after writing in a public office four years, he studied medicine, and practised as a physician and surgeon from 1831 until his death. In the spring of 1835 he discovered the fossil footprints in the red sandstone of the Connecticut valley. He called the attention of scientific men to the subject, and his investigations were afterward extended by Prof. Edward Hitchcock and others. American geologists were early convinced of the genuineness of the footprints; but great skepticism existed in England until, in 1842, Dr. Deane sent a box of the impressions with a communication to Dr. G. A. Mantell, by whom they were placed before the geological society of London. He was a contributor to the Boston "Medical and Surgical Journal" and the "American Journal of Science and Art," wrote papers for medical and scientific societies, and at the time of his death was engaged in the preparation of an elaborate memoir upon fossil footprints for the Smithsonian institution, with lithographic plates made by himself, by which the color of the rock and the actual appearance of the footprints were exactly reproduced.

These plates were all completed.