Bell's papers are evenly divided between student notebooks and professional correspondence. The notebooks for his undergraduate courses in mathematics, physical and biological sciences, and engineering cover the period 1858-1861. His correspondence includes letters from John William Dawson, George Mercer Dawson, Archibald Byron Macallum, Henry Taylor Bovey, C.H. McLeod, B.J. Harrington, David Ross McCord, and Major H.H. Lyman, largely on Bell's expeditions and publications, and on the affairs of the Geological Survey and the McGill Graduates' Society, 1898-1907.
Fonds consists of a manuscript of Mémoires de mathématique et de physique contenant un traité des épicycloïdes (published in Paris in 1674) and illustrated with mathematical diagrams.
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.
