These notebooks contain lectures or reports on lectures, with corresponding watercolor and pen-and-ink drawings. There are volumes on geology (Great Britain and elsewhere), natural history, mechanics (sketches of levers, valves, and weighing machines), and steam engines (sketches of mechanics of boilers).

Notes kept by the Yale undergraduate John Austin Stevens on 20 lectures on natural philosophy delivered by Jeremiah Day during the fall, 1812. Includes lectures on gravitation, mechanics, and hydrostatics (hydrology), the last including theories of rivers, springs, and groundwater.

Notebook of Henry Dilworth Gilpin for a course on natural philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, ca.1819, with additional notes on mathematics. The professor for both courses was probably Robert Maskell Patterson.