The collection consists of a journal kept sporadically from 3 August 1835 to 4 July 1839 as well as a notebook titled "Mathematics, 1835;" a handwritten synopsis of the lives of Sir Herbert Taylor and Sir Charles Forbes; and a letter from Sir Charles Forbes to Lord John Russell, 1848, concerning Charles J. Briscoe and his family. It includes two black-and-white photographs of Charles J. Briscoe, a typewritten list of the "Loan collection of Mr. John Kerr", and a list of the lectures of the Philosophical and Geological Society by S. Frye, President, dated November 7, 1841.