The items in this collection are both bound and unbound sets of the pre-printed forms which were used to record measurements of the transits of objects across the Greenwich Meridian and thus allow the accurate calculation of their position. Observations made on the Airy and Cooke Reversible Transit Circles were treated by the observers as a continuous sequence and the forms in later volumes are generally headed "Cooke Reversible Transit Circle".

These volumes contain a variety of standardised pro formas on which the reduction of stellar observations have been made. The forms seem to have been completed whilst loose and to have been bound up at a later date.

Two journals by Franklin-Adams recording his astronomical work from 1897, when he first established an observatory at his house, until 1909, thus covering his time spent mapping the southern heavens at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope (1902-1904).