Additional title information from a tipped-in title-page: May 3th 1748. Nat' Display'd being a Short account of Such particulars of Natural History as was thought most proper to Excite Curiosity & form the Minds of Youths. G. Faux Delin.

Author's annotations: Gregory Faux has scribbled his name over the end-sheets (once with address) and signed p. 260.

Pages [i-vi] in the volume provide title-pages and an introduction to the volume. Pages 1-65 include topics related to astronomy, comets, optics, chemistry, microscopes and other inventions, and pages 66-71 provide an "Explanation of the Figures."

Pages 72-123 are "Nature display'd," apparently a digest of Humphreys' 1733 translation of Abbé Pluche's Spectacle de la nature, 1732-1750. Topics covered include insects, shellfish, birds and hawking, animals, fish, plants. (Pluche's work appeared in a number of volumes, and the Humphreys' translation, of which the Kenneth Spencer Research Library has a copy, covers only the beginning of it; it is likely that some of the rest of this manuscript is based on Pluche's volumes 3-4, published in 1735 and 1739, that treated earth and the heavens.)

Pages 125-139 contain figures; pages 141-143 concern Grafting; and pages 143-145 discuss "The origin of Arts"--on transportation and wood. Pages 146-152 are more figures and pages 153-216 concern Of Rivers (gold, salt, circulation of water); Mountains (reindeer, buffalo, chamois); the Sea (includes ships, trade, fisheries, shell-fish, sea-plants); the Air (includes weather, earthquakes, air-pressure, smell, speech).

Pages 216-238 cover topics related to fossils and geology, chemistry, mines, gunpowder, glass technology, microscope, jewels, petrefactions, and metal technology. Pages 238-245 regard The Physical Possibility of the Deluge (Theory that the axis of the antediluvian Earth was not tipped); the Last-Judgment will be of fire, which surrounds us presently in the form of light. The last pages in the volume [248-260] contain an index.