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STOCK....Lasting Beauty.

The Stock has been made the emblem of lasting beauty; because, though it is less graceful than the rose, and less majestic than the lily, its splendour is more durable, and its fragrance of longer continuance. Few flowering plants have been so much and so rapidly improved by cultivation as the Stock. Within the last two centuries, its nature has been almost entirely changed by the florist; and it is now a shrub whose branches are covered with blossoms little inferior in dimensions to the rose. Stocks are produced of various colours, but the bright red or carmine must ever remain the favourite variety. The principal branches of this fragrant family are the Ten-week Stock, so named from flowering about ten weeks after it is sown; and the Brompton, which does not bloom till about twelve months after sowing, and was first cultivated in the neighbourhood of Brompton, England.

Without the smile from partial beauty won,
Oh, what were man!—a world without a sun!
Campbell.

Beauty has gone; but yet her mind is still
As beautiful as ever; still the play

Of light around her lips has every charm
Of childhood in its freshness.

Percival.

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