16mo. 16pp. With frontispiece and five further hand-coloured engraved plates depicting Flora (as a goddess) and her fairies, within detailed botanical scenes. Original printed wrappers, a little chipped and marked, some damp-staining to upper wrapper, contemporary previous owner's inscription to verso of frontispiece.

'Now on this grand occasion, 'twas Flora's desire,
Each Fairy should put on her gayest attire,
And convey to the elegant Garden at Kew,
Ev'ry Plant which Dame Nature exhibit's to view.'

A delightful, lesser-known botanical sequel to William Roscoe's immensely successful Butterfly's Ball (London, 1807), produced by Harris and following the goddess Flora on a May Day 'Review, at the Royal Botanical Garden in Kew' - in the same format - for a juvenile readership during the first decade of the nineteenth-century.

The verse in this work, following the goddess Flora, its educational content, providing information of geographical origins of certain flowers, and the antics of insects such as the Bee, and the finely engraved botanical scenes, produced by Maria Flaxman (1768-1833), coincide to produce an elaborate and gratifying whole:

'But a mischievous Gnome, by invisible power,
A Bee had conceal'd in the delicate Flower;
Which the Goddess unthinkingly plac'd on her breast,
Whose sweetness attracted the Bee from his Nest;
And while on her beautiful Bosom reclin'd
He stole all its Sweets, and his sting left behind.

...

But if I recounted each Flower by name,
Which either from Asia or Africa camel
Form the New Southern Islands, or vast Western World,
Where first great Columbus his banners unfurl'd;
And describ'd ev're beauty of all the gay Flowers,
'Twould engage the attention a great many hours.'

We've been unable to trace any copy in the original printed wrappers as having gone through the rooms in living memory. Institutionally rare; COPAC and OCLC locate just the BL copy in the UK, and 11 further in the US.