This volume is a record of a schoolboy's life in Switzerland, with comments on his life in Passy with his grandfather, Benjamin Franklin.

This diary records David Brainard's sermons and travels among the Indians of New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

William Clark kept this diary on an expedition to make a treaty with the Osage Indians in the Missouri Territory. A sketch drawn under the September 16 entry is apparently a draft of Clark's Fort Osage map, while the first page of notes presents color scheme used on another draft. See Kate L. Gregg, Westward with Dragoons (1937: 48) for the map in printed version.

A merchant and member of the Society of Friends, Pim Nevins (1756-1833) lived most of his life in the English midlands. Recorded in Pigot's Directory of 1834 as a member of the gentry resident in Hunslet Lane, Leeds, Nevins was a woollen cloth manufacturer, finisher, and merchant whose operations were located at Larchfield Mill, near Huddersfield. During a voyage to visit Friends' meetings in the United States in 1802-1803, Pim Nevins kept a journal to record his thoughts and experiences. In presenting a copy of his diary to his children, he wrote: "some parts [of the diary] wch. being by way of memorandum to assist my memory will of course be no ways interesting to you; other parts being fill'd with the effusions of my own thoughts, will I fear be dry to you unless your minds should in some measure be dip'd into the like state with mine when influencing my pen; some other parts may entertain you." The journal includes a mixture of description of the cities, towns and landscape through which Nevins passed and accounts of his visits with Friends in New York city, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, Alexandria, Bethlehem, Pa., Easton, Pa., the Pocono Mountains, northern New Jersey, New Brunswick, N.J., and Trenton, N.J. It also includes a delicate watercolor drawing of the Delaware Water Gap.

This diary is a journal of a trip from Philadelphia by stage to Pittsburgh, then afoot through Franklin, LeBoeuf, and Erie to the Huron River; thence by boat to Detroit, where he remained 26-29 July, when he set out by canoe for Michilimackinac. Included are descriptions of Detroit, plants, animals, springs, Indian mounds, and notes on goitre.

This diary records the travels of Loammi Baldwin in the Netherlands (then including Belgium), England, and France, with detailed observations and careful pen-and-ink sketches of canals and canal machinery.

A physician, natural historian, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815) was one of the central figures in Philadelphia's early national scientific establishment. Having received his medical training in European universities, Barton was appointed Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1789, lecturing on botany, materia medica, natural history. A prolific author, he established his reputation as one of the nation's preeminent botanists through his botanical text book The Elements of Botany (1803), but his contribtions to zoology, ethnology, and medicine were equally noteworthy. Barton's monograph on the "fascinating faculty" of the rattlesnake and his efforts in historical linguistics (New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America, 1798) were widely read, and his Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal (1804-1809) was one of the nation's first medical journals and an important outlet for natural historical research. The Barton Papers offer a comprehensive view of the professional work of Benjamin Smith Barton from the time of his return to the United States in 1789 until his death. The collection is divided into five series: Correspondence, Subject Files, Bound Volumes, Graphic Materials, and Printing Plates. The collection includes a particularly valuable series of botanical, medical, and natural historical drawings collected by Barton for research, reference, and publication. Among the many artists represented are William Bartram, Frederick Pursh, Pierre Turpin, and Benjamin Henry Latrobe.

Through his craniometic studies of human races, the Philadelphia physician Samuel George Morton (1799-1851) exerted a profound influence on the development of physical anthropology in antebellum America, and made substantial contributions to mineralogy, paleontology, and natural history. Relating primarily to Morton's scientific interests, the Morton Papers include insights into Morton's perspectives on education, medical practice, geology and mineralogy, craniology, paleontology, the Wilkes Exploring Expedition (also known as the United States Exploring Expedition 1838-1842), and his two major monographs, the Crania Americana and Crania Aegyptiaca. Several of the letters were written by Morton in his capacity as corresponding secretary of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Also included in this collection are Morton's "Some Remarks on the Infrequency of Mixed Offspring Between the European and Australian Races" (1850), Joseph Barclay Pentland's notes on the aborigines of Peru (ca. 1840?), and newspaper clippings on Morton's death; a diary of Morton's trip to the West Indies, 1834, a set of craniological sketches for use in Crania Americana, and a microfilm of letters in private hands, written to Morton, 1838-1844