John Benbow, Jr., of Cowley Hall Mills, Middlesex, England, was an avid amateur beekeeper in the 1840s and 1850s. His "Bee Book" is a small (16mo) copiously illustrated treatise and journal of beekeeping. Divided into three parts -- "Other people's experiments," "Our own experiments," and an annual log (1846-1854) -- the book includes information on hive construction, seasonal management, the cleaning of hives, and other miscellaneous information culled both from printed sources and personal "experiments." The 44 pen and ink drawings include technical drawings of hives and beekeeping apparatus, along with humorous sketches of the activities of an "amateur apiarian."

Born in Austro-Hungary in either 1748 or 1750, Guillermo Dupaix became one of the first Europeans to observe and describe the archaeological riches of Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Yucatan. Between 1805 and 1807, he lead three Royal expeditions to survey major Mexican archaeological sites, working in close concert with Jose Luciano Castañeda, an artist with the National Museum. Among the sites they visited were the Mayan ruins at Palenque, the Zapotec/Mixtec site at Mitla, and several Aztec sites. The APS version of Viages Sobre las Antiquedades Mejicanas is one of several contemporary manuscript copies of Dupaix's seminal work on Mexican archaeology. The work consists of two volumes, the first containing the text, the second, copies of Castañeda's illustrations, which here lack the distortions introduced in King's edition.

In many ways, Jonathan Couch was a prototype of the Victorian provincial naturalist, a trained physician whose eclectic, but intensely local interests ran from the life sciences to geology, Cornish folk beliefs, and local history. His major works included a three-volume translation of Pliny's Natural History (London, 1847-1849) published by the Wernerian Club of London, The History of Polperro (Truro, 1871), and the exhaustive four-volume A History of the Fishes of the British Islands (London, 1862-1868). The remnants of a wide-ranging mind, the Couch Papers contain a sampling of correspondence, rough drafts of articles, and notes on a variety of topics of interest to the Cornish naturalist and antiquarian, Jonathan Couch. The bulk of the correspondence relates to Couch's translation of Pliny's Natural History, published by the Wernerian Club of London between 1847 and 1849. The notes are highly diverse, but include some systematic descriptions of fishes, probably used in his A History of the Fishes of the British Islands and notes Cornish folk beliefs. Of particular interest are his "Notes connected with instinct and reason" and three manuscripts relating to evolutionism: "Enquiry into the circumstances...," "On the history and development of man," and "The Natural History of the Creation of the World, with its changes to the subsidence of the flood and Noah."

Containing over 4 linear feet of letters and documents, the Franklin-Bache Papers comprises the second largest collection of letters and documents relating to Benjamin Franklin in the APS Library. Although the scope of the collection is broad, including materials from the time of Franklin's arrival in Philadelphia to his death, the heart of the collection documents the period of Franklin's ministry in France (1776-1785) and his diplomatic efforts to win financial and military support for the revolutionary cause, as well as less intensive coverage of his ministry in England before the Revolution. Franklin's correspondence with American and French officials, financiers (personal and otherwise), and savants provides tantalizing details on the social context of Franklin's ministry in France, his intellectual life, and his growing celebrity. Much of the correspondence documents the efforts to convince French officials early in the war to support the American cause, but there is valuable material relating to the peace negotiations as well. The collection is equally rich in personal correspondence, including a rich set of letters from Mary Stevenson Hewson, Georgiana Shipley, Catherine Ray Greene, Jane Mecom, Deborah Franklin, and a number of Franklin's other relatives. The collection is arranged chronologically.

The Calendar of the Papers of Benjamin Franklin prepared by Isaac Minis Hays for the bicentennial of Franklin's birth in 1906 provides access to the largest portion of the Franklin Papers at the APS. The items were originally bound into volumes in roughly chronological order, with letters to Franklin preceding those from Franklin and at the end of the collection, Franklin's letters owned by the University of Pennsylvania. Each manuscript is still identified by Hays' reference numbers, which include a roman numeral refering to the original volume followed by an arabic number to identify the folio. The electronic version of the finding aid replicates Hays' calendar, including the introductory material and item-level descriptions. It has been updated to reflect corrections in the metadata, corrections of personal names, dates, and description.