Stock. 
(LASTING BEAUTY.) 
T HE Stock has been long established in English gardens, 
and, under the somewhat puzzling name of “ gilly¬ 
flower,” is frequently mentioned by our oldest writers. There 
has been a long-standing dispute amongst florigraphists as to 
what plant was really meant by the latter diffusedly-applied 
term, supposed to be a corruption of the French giroflier. 
Pinks and carnations were undoubtedly classed formerly with 
the stock as gillyflowers, but more recently, in order to dis¬ 
tinguish them, were called clove-gillyflowers and stock-gilly¬ 
flowers. 
The stock should, indeed, be a favourite flower with the 
softer sex, inasmuch as it is the chosen representative of what 
Madame Rachel so vehemently protests that she has disco¬ 
vered the secret elixir of, that is to say, lasting beauty. P'or 
several centuries, as might be supposed, it has been a great 
pet with the ladies, and carefully did the dames of yore culti¬ 
vate it within the circumscribed limits of their castle gardens. 
No flowering plant, it is said, has received more fostering care 
than the stock ; and so completely has it surrendered its being 
up to the florist, that what was formerly only a little sea-side 
flower now occasionally assumes the dimensions of a shrub, 
and puts forth blossoms almost equalling the rose in size, but 
—mark the but, fair reader—sometimes of so evanescent a 
nature and so variable a hue, that some flowers of this species 
have been termed mutabilis, or changeable. So, after all, 
ladies, you must seek another emblem, if you wish one, for 
enduring beauty, for the constant changes of this plant only 
render it a fit representative of earthly beauty’s mutability. 
