The set of Napier's Bones is produced in a traditional format with punched numerals on boxwood rods in a decorated walnut slip-case. The ten calculating rods are provided with a tabulat and fixed multiplier rod and there is also a square and cube-root block. The set can be used to learn a popular calculating technique of the seventeenth century - essentially multiplication and division for those who had not learned multiplication tables but were able to do addition and subtraction.

The piece of ephemera is an uncut sheet, folded twice to make an eight-page pamphlet, containing details of a printed syllabus for 'A COURSE OF SIX LECTURES in the Newtonian Experimental PHILOSOPHY' by Benjamin Martin.

So far as is known this is a unique copy, dated by Millburn to c.1748. The lectures in question were to be given at Martin's house 'in Orange-Court, Bath', and subscribers would be entertained with various instruments, including the solar microscope, the air-pump and the orrery.

The course, Martin assured his customers, 'is particularly calculated for such Gentlemen and Ladies as would chuse to be acquainted with the more rational and sublimer Parts of Knowledge in the shortest Way, and with the least Expence'. The subscription was two shillings per lecture or half a guinea (ten shillings and sixpence) for the complete course.