He removed his residence, early in 1887, to Brooklyn, N. Y., his health having already begun to fail; and he died in Brooklyn, on the 30th of April, in his 70th year. He married, November 23, 1847, Maria J. Hildreth, of Sag Harbor, L. I, who survived him, with one of their two daughters. Besides his specialty of nervous diseases, Dr Ayers had made notable acquisitions in certain departments of natural science, especially in ichthyology, on which he had published a large number of memoirs, in the "Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History" and of the "California Academy of Sciences". While in San Francisco he was a deacon in the First Congregational Church.