ART. 30.] CRIMES AKD PUNISHMENTS. 231

for the payment of money, check, or order drawn on any bank
of this State or any other State, paper bill of credit, certificate
granted by or under the authority of this State, or of the United
States, or any of them, or of any last will and testament, or
codicil, shall be punished in the same manner as robbery or
larceny of goods and chattels.

102. The taking and carrying away of corn from the stalk, of
the quantity of a peck or more, or the taking and carrying away
of willows from the stump of the weight of five pounds or more,
with a felonious intent 'to convert the same to his own use, shall
be deemed a felony; and every white person or free negro guilty
of the same, upon conviction, shall be deemed guilty of felony,
and be sentenced to the penitentiary for not less than two years
nor more than five years.

103. Every person, his aiders and abettors, who shall be con-
victed before any court exercising criminal jurisdiction at the
place where the offender may be arrested, or may reside, of the
crime of stealing, cutting away, or in any manner wilfully
injuring any of the buoys, their mooring chains and stones, which
are now moored, or may hereafter be moored, in the Patapsco
River or the Chesapeake Bay by the direction of the insurance
companies of the city of Baltimore, shall be sentenced to the
penitentiary for a period of not less than eighteen months nor
more than seven years, at the discretion of the court.

104. If any person shall secretly and feloniously steal, take
and carry away any tobacco plants, while growing and belong-
ing to any inhabitant of this State, such person, upon conviction
thereof, shall suffer such punishment and undergo such confine-
ment in the penitentiary as if the said tobacco plants had been
feloniously stolen, taken and carried away after the same had
been severed from the freehold.

LETTERS.

105. If any person whatsoever shall presume to take and
break open any letter whatsoever, not being unto him directed,
or not having special license from the person to whom the same
is directed, his executors or administrators, so to do, he shall,
upon conviction thereof, suffer imprisonment for six days and be
fined fifteen dollars, one-half to the State and the other half to
the informer.