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MIGNONETTE.

YOUR QUALITIES SURPASS YOUR CHARMS.

NEARLY one hundred years have run their course since the Mignonette first bloomed in our climes. It was brought from Egypt. Linneus, who gave to it the name of Reseda odorata, compares its perfume with that of ambrosia: its fragrance is stronger at the rising and setting of the sun than at noon. Mignonette flowers from the beginning of spring to the end of autumn; but, by preserving it in a temperate green-house, its sweets may be inhaled in the winter season. It then becomes woody, lives many years, shoots up and forms with care a shrub of the most charming appear

ance.

No gorgeous flowers the meek Reseda grace,
Yet sip, with eager trunk, yon busy race
Her simple cup, nor heed the dazzling gem
That beams in Fritillaria's diadem.

EVANS.

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Your qualities surpass your charms you with a pure & ardent love.

Ilove

Published by Saunders & Otley Conduit Street.

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ACACIA.

FRIENDSHIP.

THE Acacia is a native of North America, from Canada to Carolina, and it has been consecrated by the Indians to the genius of chaste love. Their bows are made of the incorruptible wood of this tree, and their arrows are pointed with its thorns. Those wild sons of the desert are susceptible of an attachment fraught with delicacy: they may perhaps be unable to give utterance to it in words, but they find means to express it in a branch of Acacia when in blossom. The Indian girl, like the city coquette, understands this flattering language, and receives, with a blush, the homage of him who has won her heart by his respect and love.

It is not much more than a century since this ornamental tree was introduced into the gardens of France from American seeds by Robin, the botanist, after whom this family was named Robinia. It is a large, handsome tree, of

quick growth, beginning from the third year to convert its alburnum into perfect wood, which is of so fine a grain and so hard as to be substituted by turners for box in many kinds of light work. Its foliage, of a bright green, is peculiarly light and elegant. The species of Acacia most commonly cultivated are the Pseudo-Acacia, with white blossom, and the Acacia glutinosa, (so named from a clammy moisture which covers its branches) with rose-coloured flowers. The Rose Acacia is a highly ornamental shrub, with large bunches of pink-coloured, papilionaceous blossoms, whose beauty, like that of the mossis enhanced by the bristly covering of the stalk and calyx.

rose,

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