In Adv.MS.50.5.11, the account of Campbell’s visit to America is excluded. It begins at what corresponds to page 159 of the printed version, in the middle of a letter `To a Scientific travelling Chum, From the Antipodes`, but apart from a few other minor discrepancies the manuscript and printed versions correspond.

The text of ‘My Circular Notes’ consists of a combination of the author`s journal and letters to his family, particularly his step-mother, 1874-1875. The letters in the manuscript volumes were copied, according to a note by Campbell at the beginning, by Isabella Scott, but the log is in the author`s own hand.

The section entitled ‘The Period of Polar Glaciation’ (Adv.MS.50.5.12, folio 339) is in yet another hand.