bundles of leaf tobacco lying thereon. Two sheaves of wheat
stood in the foreground, and in the background could be seen
in a ship approaching shore, with fore and main top sails set,
the other sails furled. At the base was a cornucopia. OH the
circle about this side were the words: "Industry the means
and plenty the result."

THE EIGHTH SEAL.

On March 4, 1817, the Council adopted a new seal. The de-
vice was ordered to be the coat-of-arms of the United States,
surrounded with the words "Seal of the State of Maryland."

THE NINTH SEAL.

The seal of 1817 remained the seal of the State until 1854,
when the apparatus, called the "Great Seal," had become so
worn that a new one had to be made. Governor Enoch Louis
Lowe called attention to the inappropriateness of the State
Seal, and he suggested that the new seal bear the arms of the
State. The Legislature of that year ordered a new seal. There
was no longer a Governor's Council in existence to make and
unmake seals. The Legislature intended to return to the old
seal of the Province. In the preparation of the seal it had
evidently recourse to a rough wood-cut, printed on the title
page of Bacon's Laws of Maryland, 1765, and some errors
contained in it were reproduced. One of the officers of State,
for political reasons, still further mutilated the seal by put-
ting an American eagle on the device in place of the ancient
crest.

THE TENTH AND PRESENT SEAL.

The attention of the Legislature of 1874 having been at-
tracted to the errors in the Great Seal, a joint resolution was
adopted looking to their correction. Reference having been
made to Bacon's wood-cut as the model of the new seal, Gov-
ernor James Black Groome determined not to take any action,
and thereby prevent the perpetuation of the errors sought to
be corrected. He brought the matter to the notice of the Leg-
islature of 1876. A carefully prepared resolution was then
adopted, restoring the seal to the exact description given of it
in Lord Baltimore's Commission to Governor Stone, on Au-
gust 12, 1648, and this is the Great Seal of Maryland today.

The Great Seal is in the custody of the Secretary of State,
but the Governor has the control and use of it whenever nec-
essary for any purpose provided for by the Constitution and
laws, or when needed to authenticate communications between