From 1856 to 1868, George Tyson was a partner of Russell and Company, a firm that had engaged in the tea and opium trade, and the most powerful American commercial house in China. Originally from Boston, Tyson is credited with helping to introduce steamboats to the Yangtze River, and like John Murray Forbes, his better-known predecessor in Russell and Co., when he returned to the United States he joined the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, eventually rising to become Director and General Auditor. Prior to October 1865, Tyson collected these 300 exquisitely detailed watercolors of Japanese plants painted by local artists in Nagasaki. Each watercolor is identified by name and month of blooming, some with brief additional descriptive notes. An index at the front of the volume provides transliterations of the Japanese names.

Watercolor sketches of English flowers and cryptogams, arranged systematically and identified by scientific and common names.

The youngest of the eleven children of Admiral Thomas Sabine, Baronet Pasley (1804-1884) and his wife Jane Matilda Lily Wynyard, Madalene Pasley was born in 1848, about the time that her father left the Brazilian station to take up duties as superintendent of the Pembroke Dockyard. Madalene married Sir Henry Jenkyns in 1877. Produced when she was 14 years old, Madelene Pasley's "A Selection of British Butterflies and Moths" is a thin duodecimo volume containing observations on British lepidoptera, illustrated with seventeen watercolor sketches. While it was expected that a genteel young woman would acquire basic artistic skills and might be exposed to at least some facets of the study of the natural sciences, Pasley's book was accomplished with unusual skill. Her comments on the phenology, ethology, ecology, and appearance of butterflies are concise and knowledgeable and suggest that Pasley was a true enthusiast.

A member of a family of early 19th century artists and instrument makers that included Cornelius, John, and William Fleetwood Varley, Cromwell J. Varley shared in the family interests in astronomy. The Journal of Astronomical Observations includes brief notes on telescopic observations of comets, stars, and planets conducted by Cromwell J. Varley between 1845 and 1858, accompanied by twenty ink and watercolor sketches.

In 1839-1840, the ichthyologist Richard Parnell left London for a collecting expedition to Jamaica and a tour of museum collections in the United States. An authority on both fishes and grasses, Parnell published two noted works as a young man, his Prize Essay on the Natural and Economical History of the Fishes Marine, Fluviatile, and Lacustrine, of the River District of the Firth of Forth (Edinburgh: Neill and Co., 1838) and The Grasses of Britain, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1842-1845). He appears, however, to have abandoned publication in 1845, although he continued collecting for many years. The notebook kept by Richard Parnell during his voyage to the West Indies and United States in 1839-1840 contains little narrative, but dozens of pencil and watercolor sketches of the marine life that absorbed his interest, primarily fishes. Most sketches are accompanied by brief notes on the anatomy of the fish, sometimes with close-ups of fin structures, air bladders, or the digestive tract and stomach. Although collecting localities are seldom recorded, the majority of specimens seem to have been collected in Jamaica, with at least a few observed in vitro at the New York Museum.

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.

The Sketches of a Tour of the Lakes, of the character & customs of the Chippeway Indians & of incidents connected with the treaty of Fond du Lac... to which is super added a vocabulary of the Algic, or Chippeway language... is a record of a journey undertaken by Thomas L. McKenney and Lewis Cass, from Washington, D.C., to Fond du Lac, Wisc., to negotiate a treaty with the Chippewa and other Indians. McKenney, the Superindenant of Indian Affairs, includes an account of travel on the Great Lakes, and more memorably, a description of the "character" and customs of the Chippewa Indians, an account of the treaty of Fond du Lac, and a vocabulary of the Algic or Chippewa language. The manuscript, a fair copy of the original sent to a London publisher, is illustrated throughout with watercolor sketches of scenes and persons. It was originally published in Baltimore in 1827.

The Reina Papers contain the professional papers of cultural anthropologist Ruben E. Reina (1924-2016). Reina is an emeritus professor of anthropology and curator of ethnology who taught at the University of Pennsylvania and worked at that institution's University Museum of Archeology and Anthropology from 1957-1990. Broadly interested in modern and historical cultures of Central America, South America, and Spain, he is most widely known for his contributions to the study of the culture and peoples of Guatemala. The collection contains Reina's correspondence, administrative records, teaching materials, research notes, subject files, and written works from his career. Of particular interest are the notes from his fieldwork in Guatemala, Argentina, Spain, and Puerto Rico. A further significant component of the papers is the records of the Hispanic-Latin American Research Project. Reina served as director of the long-term project (1967-1988), during which a team of scholars compiled thousands of pages of Spanish colonial materials from the Archivo General de Indias (AGI) in Seville, Spain and Archivos General de Centro America (AGCA) in Guatemala. The Reina Papers serve as a vital storehouse of this important historical material.

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.

The most stellar member of a stellar family, Elisha Kent Kane was among the most popular American explorers of the mid-nineteenth century, a hero in the tragic mode. Born in Philadelphia in 1820, the son of John Kintzing Kane and Jane Duval Leiper, Kane studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania before earning a commission as a naval surgeon. While in the Navy, Kane embarked on the succession of voyages to exotic locales that became the basis for his extraordinary fame. In 1843, he attended Caleb Cushing's first diplomatic mission to China as ship's physician, and subsequently traveled to the Philippines and Western Africa. Distinguishing himself in the Mexican War, Kane's greatest fame came from two expeditions to the arctic, aiming to locate the lost explorer, Sir John Franklin and to explore for evidence of the open polar sea. Kane died in 1857 while attempting to organize a third arctic voyage. Part of the Kane Family Collection, the Papers of Elisha Kent Kane contain a mix of personal and family correspondence with correspondence relating to all of Kane's explorations. Intelligent, articulate and very much a romantic, Kane's letters are expressive and passionate. The collection provides fine documentation of youth, his relationship with the Spiritualist Margaret Fox, and of course his travels to China and off the coast of Africa in 1846. Kane's two expeditions to the arctic are particularly well documented, with correspondence, notes, logbooks, diaries, and sketches, as well as Kane's post-expedition notes, writings, and lectures recounting his experiences.

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