preached in many places as his services were needed in the churches.
He was the author of "History of Berkshire County" (1829) (in part); and of "Herbaceous Plants of Massachusetts" (1840), published by the State. He contributed to O'Reilly's "History of Rochester" (1838), and was one of the first to write on carices; many contributions were made to Silliman's Journal of Science and other scientific periodicals. For sixty years he regularly recorded meteorological observations.
Yale University conferred on him the degree of M. A. in 1809; Williams gave him A. M. in 1809, honorary M. D. in 1825, and LL. D. in 1850; in 1838 he received D. D. from Union College.
Early in life Dr. Dewey became an enthusiastic student of botany, and contributed very largely to the scientific knowledge of the carices. Dr. Asa Gray classed him with Schweinitz and Torrey, and speaks of his work on Caricography as an "elaborate monograph patiently prosecuted through more than forty years." He further says that in connection with the two botanists above mentioned "he laid the foundation and ensured the popularity of the study of the sedges in this country." His "Caricography," begun in 1824, was continued down to the close of 1866, when it terminated with a general index to species.
When Dr. Dewey left college in 1806, a remarkable impulse was just being given to scientific inquiry, resulting in an almost simultaneous development of chemistry, zoology, botany and geology. As a teacher of the Natural Sciences he kept fully informed and abreast of the times, and this was the case up to the end of his life. All through his career he was in correspondence with the most eminent leaders in scientific investigation, both in this country and abroad. In an "Introductory Lecture" to the medical class of the Berkshire Medical Institution delivered August 5, 1847, he says that "progress is the order of the day" and asks "what shall be done to elevate the profession?" He then describes in detail the convention held in New York in May, 1846, to form the American Medical Association, explaining and commending the purposes of that organization. Up to 1847 the text books on botany in common use were arranged after the Linnaean method, but the natural system had been slowly making its way, and Dr. Dewey was in full accord with it.
Wood's "Class-Book of Botany," the first in this country containing a flora arranged with the natural orders, was dedicated to Dr. Dewey, and in the preface the author says: "To the Rev. Professor Chester Dewey, to whom I am permitted to dedicate this volume, I am indebted for that part of the flora which relates to the difficult, yet deeply interesting, family of the carices. He has not only granted me access to his former excellent monoraph of that genus, but has prepared the article for the present work with his own hand."
In his work in Rochester, Dr. Dewey examined and re-examined the flora of the region, while at the same time he was training the youth to share his interest in botanical pursuits. His last labors were the orderly arrangement of his large collection of sedges which had been accumulating on his hands for so many years. This collection, at his request, went to Williams College.
Dr. Dewey's life was one of unremitting toil in many fields of research. He had an insatiate desire to acquire knowledge, then to disseminate it among the people in language adapted to their understanding. He was a constant contributor to Silliman's Journal and to the local papers on scientific subjects and always had pupils or friends who looked to him for encouragement and instruction.
Dr. Dewey married Sarah Dewey in 1810; they had five children. She died in 1823 and in 1825 he married Olivia Hart Pomeroy of Pittsfield, Mass.; they had ten children.
Dr. Dewey, active in scientific observation almost to the day of his death, died in Rochester, December 15, 1867.
DeWolf, James Ratchford (1819–1901).
James Ratchford DeWolf, Nova Scotia alienist, was born at Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in 1819. His education was obtained at Horton Academy, and his professional training at Winsor, N. S., and at Edinburgh University, from which he graduated M. D. in 1841, and in the same year obtained the L. R. C. S. (Edinburgh).
He was in general practice from the time of his graduation in 1841 at Kentville, N. S., and at Brigus, Newfoundland until 1844, when he settled in Halifax. There he practised to the time of his appointment to the superintendency of the Nova Scotia Hospital for the Insane in 1857, and, being fully imbued with the then developing idea that kindness, tact, appeal to the patient's sense of honor and of the esthetic counted for much in promoting recovery, he at once institued at the hos-
