STOCK OR GILLYFLOWKR. 21 



shrub in point of size, whose branches are covered 

 with blossoms but httle inferior to the Rose in size, 

 whilst they are as thick set as the flowers on the 

 Mazereon branch, forming, on the whole, a mass of 

 briUiant beauty, that is not exceeded by any of the 

 exotics which Asia, Africa, and America have 

 poured into our gardens of pleasure. 



We have seen branches of the Carmine Stock 

 exhibited at meetings of the London Horticultural 

 Society, that had the appearance of ropes of Roses ; 

 and we have had them growing in our own garden 

 of extraordinary size and beauty : but the largest 

 we have yet met with was in the garden of Mr. 

 Stockdale, at Notting-hill, near Bays water, which 

 measured eleven feet nine inches in circumference, 

 w^hen in flower in the month of May, 1822. 



At wliat exact period we first obtained double 

 flowers from the Stock Gillyflower is uncertain ; 

 but neither Turner nor Gerard appear to have 

 heard of such a thing in their time, although the 

 latter both speaks and gives us a good figure of the 

 Wall Gillyflower in its double state. In the year 

 1829, both Johnson and Parkinson write on the 

 Stock with double flowers ; so that this improve- 

 ment seems to have taken place between the reigns 

 of EHzabeth and Charles I., consequently, at the 

 beginning of the seventeenth century ; but it is only 

 within the present century that its high state of 



