110 BRECK’S NEW BOOK OF FLOWERS. 
What an unlimited field for future improvements opens 
before us! We shall never arrive at perfection, but great 
improvements are yet to be made in many of the new as 
well as in the old flowers. We do not hold that the ex- 
citement and pleasure incident to the improvement and 
cultivation of a flower-garden, will wholly remove the ills 
and troubles of life; but it is an occupation that has a ten- 
dency to remove many disquitudes of the mind, and gives 
employment for many odd moments, that would otherwise 
be spent in brooding over some real or imaginary evil. 
We think Cowper came near the truth when he said: 
“The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns ; 
The lowering eye, the petulance, the frown, 
And sullen sadness, that o’ershade, distort, 
And mar the face of beauty, when no cause 
For such immeasurable woe appears: 
These Flora banishes, and gives the fair, 
Sweet smile and bloom, less transient than her own.” 
ABRONIA. 
(Name from the Greek, signifying delicate.] 
Abronia umbell4ia, — A beautiful annual, with long 
trailing stems, bearing clusters of elegant flowers in dense 
umbels; color, delicate lilac, with white centre, highly and 
‘deliciously fragrant. 
The seeds are enclosed in a husky covering, and look 
, Very unpromising, but they vegetate freely. They may 
be sown as early in the spring as the ground is ready to 
receive seed of any kind. It appears to be quite hardy, 
and easily cultivated, and has the advantage of sowing it- 
self, as there will be found in the spring an abundance 
of young plants on the ground where the plants of the last 
year were grown. The leaves are light green, of a long 
oval shape; the stem rather succulent or fleshy, two or 
three feet in length, lying prostrate on the ground. It 
