The first 237 drawings in this series, Gould items 1287-1523, were done for Birds of Australia and bound in two volumes, the "Jardine Albums." All but one of the leaves carry preprinted labels reading "Original Design for Plate [ ] Vol. [ ] of Gould's BIRDS OF AUSTRALIA"; the first 87 of these were completed by hand with the binomial and plate and volume numbers; the remainder in the first volume, Gould items 1374-1409, other than a scattered 5 with nothing on the labels, have just volume and plate written in.

In the second volume all but one of the drawings lack entries on the labels (the exception has no label), but have the numbers of volume and plate written in pencil on the leaf; many of the leaves in both volumes have been made up to a common size by the addition of carefully pasted fragments of paper.