92 BENJAMIN SILLIMAN, 
he were able to undertake any labor proposed to him or not. 
Four years since, after an excursion, late in the autumn of 
1880 among the mountains of Pennsylvania, he was prostrated 
for some weeks with heart disease; and it seemed to his friends 
for awhile that at the best his days of active work were at an 
end. But in the course of another six months he was off to 
New Mexico on a visit to the Negretta Mountains (Black 
Range) in Socorro County ; and he returned from the elevated 
mountain region apparently uninjured by the trip, though 
conscious of a weakened constitution. His energy was far 
from giving out; and other excursions were undertaken in the 
course of the following years, including another trip to New 
Mexico. His recent illness commenced in October last, with a 
severe return of his heart complaint, complicated by an attack 
of pneumonia; and from that time his decline made slow but 
steady progress—more visible to friends than to himself. 3 
One of the last literary labors which he performed was the 
preparation, for the National Academy of Sciences, of a memoir 
of his old friend and colleague at Louisville, Dr. J. Lawrence 
Smith ; and during the last few weeks of his life, when his 
strength was already largely gone he gave directions, with 4 
touching degree of affection and interest, for the completion of 
the medal which was to commemorate the labors of his Aca- 
demic associate. The generous, whole-souled affection for his 
friends, which characterized his entire life, was: never more 
strongly manifested than during his last days. 
The funeral services took place at the College Chapel on the 
seventeenth of January. | 
Professor Silliman was married in May, 1840, to Miss Susan 
H. Forbes of New Haven, eldest child of William J. and Char 
lotte Root Forbes. Mrs. Silliman died in March, 1878. Four 
daughters and an only son survive them. 
