The collection contains travel notes by a local historian and ethnographer, zemstvo doctor, later professor of Kazan Imperial University N.A. Tolmachev, containing valuable information about the social and economic situation of the rural population of the Kazan province in the middle of the XIX century. This historical source expands our ideas about the everyday life of "plow and plow people," their customs and customs, gives an idea of ​ ​ the development of agriculture, latrines and handicrafts of Russian and Tatar farmers on the eve of the Great Reforms.