Most of the present collection dates from Lenox-Conyngham's years in Cambridge, but, the diaries apart, many items look back on his service with the Survey of India. The extensive correspondence with Burrard presents many new insights into the workings of the Survey, and the personalities of its senior officers, while that with R. H. Phillimore illustrates the many difficulties Phillimore encountered in compiling and publishing, in newly independent India, his massive History of the Survey.