412 
CHARLES VALENTINE RILEY. 
his eldest son dying but five months before his own death— 
a series of terrible afflictions which he bore with a soldier’s 
fortitude. His widow and youngest daughter survive him- 
His deeds are his best eulogy. 
0. H. Tittmann. 
CHARLES VALENTINE RILEY. 
1843-1895. 
Since the shocking death of Professor Riley, on the 14th 
of last September, very many obituary notices have been 
published in America and abroad, and every reading scien¬ 
tific man must have become familiar with the details of his 
most useful life. Perhaps the best of these obituary notices 
are those by Dr. G. Brown Goode and Dr. A. S. Packard, the 
first prepared for the Joint Commission of the Scientific So¬ 
cieties of Washington and afterward published in Science 
(n. s., vol. iii, No. 59, February 14,1896), and the second pub¬ 
lished some weeks previously, also in Science (n. s., vol. ii, 
No. 49, December 6, 1895). 
So full are these two notices, and so particularly complete 
and appreciative in their estimates of Riley’s scientific work 
and his influence upon American science, that there seems to 
be almost nothing to be said; yet on account of his earty con¬ 
nection with this Society, and the great interest which he 
always took in its work and in its prosperity, it seems most 
fitting that at least a brief account of his life and death be 
presented at this time. 
Charles Valentine Riley was born near London, 18th Sep¬ 
tember, 1843, and spent his boyhood there. His father was 
a clergyman of the Church of England. On his mother’s 
second marriage he was sent to boarding school at Dieppe, 
at the age of eleven, and later to Bonn, and at the age of 
seventeen took his fortune in his own hand and came to 
America. He farmed for a while in Illinois, and then went 
