This collection was assembled by Court and was partly used in the book, "The History of the Microscope" (with Reginald S. Clay, London, 1932). There is historical correspondence (including some by Court), documents, broadsides, and photographs, concerning microscopes and instruments. This includes material on Joseph Bonomi, James Epps, John Lee, Edward Nairne, and others. There is significant material on Cornelius Varley: account book, autobiographical sketch, watercolors and sketches, etc. This collection also contains a large number of deeds pertaining to the property of John Lee (1783-1866), Fellow of the Royal Society and an amateur astronomer. In addition, there are about 300 pamphlets, including early trade and auction catalogs, used by Court for his research.

This collection pertains principally to the Cherokees of North Carolina and Oklahoma and to their language, ethnography, folklore, archeology, history, music, etc. Includes Indian studies and correspondence by Gillespie, notes on Indian dances and linguistics, bibliographies, publications of the Archaeological Society of Brigham Young University, and newspaper clippings. Also comprised of materials on: Apache, Calusa, Chippewa, Choctaw, Delaware, Eskimo, Fox, Iroquois, Karankawa, Kuchin, Louchens, Mattaponi, Muskogee, Navajo, Onondaga, Pueblo, Sauk, Seminole, Seneca, Shawnee, Sioux, Slave, Timucua, Tuscarora, Tutelo, and Wyandot. Contains: Gillespie, "A grammar of western dialect of Cherokee language of the Iroquoian family," 1949-1954 (131 pages); "Miscellaneous material on the Cherokee Indians and language"; "Miscellaneous items pertaining to the American Indian."

These are site reports on archaeological excavations in northern and western Pennsylvania and upstate New York. Most of the excavations were sponsored by the Pennsylvania Historical Commission (1929-1948). The reports include photographs, maps, and diagrams.

This is an interesting and detailed journal of his trip to America and travels therein. Using Philadelphia as his base, Beck commented on the city's society and institutions, and mentions locals, including an interesting note on Titian R. Peale. Other areas visited included: Atlantic City, St. Louis, Colorado, Utah, California and New York, where he visited the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company and Washington D.C., where he met, and described, artist Henry Ulke. The volume is filled with memorabilia: advertisements, photographs, playbills, menus, original pencil and watercolor sketches, some of machinery.

Robert Cushman Murphy (1887-1973), one of the twentieth century's great ornithologists, was curator of mammals and birds at the Brooklyn Museum (1911-1917) and was curator of birds and later chairman of birds at the American Museum of Natural History (1917-1973). The world's foremost authority on sea birds, in 1936, he penned Oceanic Birds of South America, a two volume set. An ardent traveler and explorer, he kept copious notes of his travels, which he typed up, illustrated and had bound. The APS library owns forty-two bound journals. Murphy was made an APS member in 1946. A pioneer in the study of the ecology, a louse, fish, plant, lizard, an Antarctic inlet, spider, and two mountains have acquired his name. This collection contains diaries, journals, articles, addresses and observations of Murph;, generously illustrated with newspaper clippings, photographs, letters, sketches, maps, and charts.

An archaeological anthropologist and linguist, John Alden Mason spent the majority of his career at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving his undergraduate degree at Penn in 1907, Mason received a doctorate at Berkeley (1911) for his ethnographic work on the Salinan Indians of California, but his diverse interests in later years ran the gamut from Puerto Rican folklore to Piman languages and cultures (including Pima, Papago, Pima Bajo, Northern and Southern Tepehuan, and Tepecano), Mayan, Aztec, and Incan archaeology, and the languages of South American Indians. Mason was curator of the University Museum at Penn from 1926 until his retirement in 1958. The Mason Papers include both in-coming and outgoing correspondence, linguistic material, notes, and photographs relating to Mason's work in the southwestern U.S., northern Mexico, and South America. Centered on the years after Mason's return to Philadelphia in 1926, the collection covers all aspects of Mason's professional life, from reports on field work to answering casual questions referred to him through the University Museum to data and analyses on Piman and other languages. The collection also contains voluminous files relating to the Mason's editorship of the American Anthropologist (bulk: 1945-1948). Of special note are a series of class notes (1908-1910) kept by Mason for course work in ethnology, archaeology, and linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania under Edward Sapir and Frank Speck.