The list gives the name of each recipient, and a brief note of what they were sent of Cayley's papers by Rouse Ball. The copies of letters sent to recipients are in most case form letters, explaining that on the death of Cayley's widow his papers were put into Rouse Ball's hands with a request that he should destroy or dispose of them as he saw fit; 'all involving matter which might be published was dealt with years ago, and what was preserved has no interest beyond the fact that it is a specimen of his work'. Longer letters were sent to G. T. Bennett, also asking whether he would like to see the models of Archimedean and other solids made by W. W. Taylor, and to D. E. Smith, also taking the opportunity to send a paper on Euler which might be of interest to the American Mathematical Monthly. A long second letter to E. H. Neville gives details of the nature of Cayley's papers, and the principles by which Rouse Ball decided what should be destroyed: 'As for letters to him, of which many hundreds were put in my hands, I laid down the rule that in general such letters should be destroyed or sent back to the writers if they were alive'; lists the few exceptions; the letter also suggests that Neville take a look at Monge's Card-Shuffling Problem.
From the Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, Vol. XXII, Part I, Cambridge February 1924.
Contents of a folder so inscribed.
B.67: 'Algebraic Geometry. Mr. Richmond. Michaelmas Term 1928'. Extensive sequence of ms. notes, variously sub-titled.
B.68: 'Curves and surfaces of orders 3 and 4. Mr. Richmond. Lent Term 1929'. Extensive sequence of ms. notes, variously sub-titled.
B.69: 'Kummer's quartic surface'. 12pp. ms. notes.
B.70: Set of ms. notes (not in Davenport's hand) mostly headed 'Kummer's Surface', some also headed 'Richmond', and dates 7-12 March 1929.
King's College, Cambridge. - Is glad to have the MSS: 'there is something very characteristic of Cayley in both; I mean his love of verifying some ingenious result (obtained in many instances by some brilliant original idea) by pure straightforward algebra that any one could carry out with patience'.