The contents are as follows. (i) Copy of a memorandum, 1806, unsigned, addressed to Sir George Hilaro Barlow, Acting Governor-General, proposing the institution of public libraries and reform of the Hindu College at Varanasi (folio 1); (ii) Letter of Sir James Mackintosh, 1807, with a printed copy of his ‘Plan of Comparative Vocabulary of Indian Languages, read at the Literary Society of Bombay on the 26th May 1806’, Bombay, 1806, and related papers (folio 10); (iii) Memorandum of William Petrie, 4 September 1808, concerning the Madras Observatory (folio 36); (iv) Copy of a letter of Judge Andrew Scott to William Petrie, 9 September 1808, concerning the proposed abolition of the Madras Observatory (folio 44); (v) Memorandum of Lieutenant William Chavasse, Madras Institution of Military Education, 1 January 1810, describing an apparatus for determining measurement of longitude at sea, with a drawing of the apparatus (folio 48); (vi) Papers, including printed tables, concerning rainfall at Madras 1791-1805 (folio 54); (vii) Copy of a letter, undated, concerning the manufacture of gunpowder (folio 77).