Bicycle Float With Sails! Flora Carnival 1898 Cabinet Card Photograph old compass but these are the two

but these are the two that survived

but either veiled (often in the most wonderfully absurd ways) or only partially in the frame

enhanced by strips of darker wood

which has remnants of its original red paint in a few spots

here the "Black Veined White" butterfly as penned at lower left

Bicycle Float With Sails! Flora Carnival 1898 Cabinet Card Photograph old compass but these are the twoFloats, parades and carnivals of all sorts were certainly hot in the 1890s, and this bicycle powered sail with anchor, constructed of netting and flowers, is just my sort of float! Waving at top is a handmade flag reading Flora, and faintly along the bottom of the image is a descriptor: "Flora Carnival 1898 No. 53" I presume the No. 53 suggesting that there were at least 52 other floats in the parade! With a handsome young man at the pedals and