278 The Correct Arms of the State of New York, 



gards their own. These devices, when found attached to documents 

 issued by these departments, do not suggest to any one familiar with 

 any of the representations of the Arms of the State, either with the 

 correct ones or the altered ones, that the document is issued by 

 authority of the State of New York, except by the legend containing 

 the name of the office or department surrounding the device. 



In contrast with this usage, at least sixteen of the States, and 

 probably many more of them have Arms and seals, whereof the de- 

 vices for the one and the other are identical, except that each seal 

 bears, as an addition to the Arms, the name of the department em- 

 ploying the seal. 



The State commissioners have received letters from the secretaries of 

 State of Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, 

 New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Ver- 

 mont, in answer to communications addressed to them regarding 

 their own usages in this respect* The responses in many cases 

 brought full sets of all the devices in use as Arms or seals, or on 

 letter-heads, making quite a voluminous collection. 



So far as we have observed, these engraved State insignia are in- 

 variably composed of a center, containing the State Arms, accom- 

 panied with words containing the name of the State, and of the par- 

 ticular department using them, ejther over, under or around the 

 picture. Of late years the laws of some of the States which have 

 suffered by painful experiences from the abuses flowing from the 

 absence of clear laws regarding the Arms and seals, specifically 

 require that the Arms of the State shall be the device to be engraved 

 upon all the seals of the State. 



For the first example, I will name the State of Arkansas, which 

 enacted, as late as 18G4, a law, one section of which reads as follows: 



"All official seals used in this State shall present the impressions, 

 emblems and devices presented by the great seal of the State, except 

 the surrounding words which shall be such as to indicate to which 

 office they may severally belong." * 



A law of Ohio, which was passed May 9, 1868, and which was en- 

 acted from the same motives, in the first section describes the device 

 of the " Arms." In the second section it is provided that the great 

 seal shall have the same device described in the preceding section. 

 The same section proceeds then to name all the courts of the State, 

 and the departments, giving the legend to be engraved on the seal of 

 each one, and closes in these words : " All the seals shall con- 

 tain the words and devices mentioned in this act, and no other. " f 



In addition to these two States, other States suffering from abuses 



* Arkansas, laws of 1864, May 3. 



t Ohio, laws of 1868, Rev. Statutes, 1880. 



