If adverse claims are made to the same tract, each claimant is to be notified of the time and place of taking testimony, and allowed to cross-examine the opposite witnesses, and to furnish counter-proof, itself subject to cross-examination. If, by reason of distance, sickness, or infirmity, the witnesses cannot personally appear before the register of the land office, their depositions, taken in conformity with the following regulations, may be received: The notice to adverse claimants must be in writing, and served in time to allow at least one day for every twenty miles which the party may have to travel in going to the place of taking evidence. The proof, in all cases, should consist of a simple detail of facts merely, and not of broad and general statements. If the pre-emptor be “the head of a family,” the witnesses must state the facts constituting him such; whether he be a husband having a wife and children, or a widower, or an unmarried person under twenty-one years of age, having a family, either of relatives or others, dependent upon him, or hired persons. All the facts relative to the settlement in person, inhabitancy, or personal residence, the time of its commencement, the manner and extent of its continuance, as also those sharing the apparent objects, must be stated. It must be stated that the claimant made the settlement on the land in person; that he has erected a dwelling upon the land; that he lived in the same, and made it his home, etc. In the event of a decision by the land officer against the claimant, he may appeal to the Commissioner of the Land Office at Washington. No entry will be permitted until the affidavit required of the claimant is taken. Duplicates thereof must be signed by the claimant, and the fact of the oath being taken must be certified by the register or receiver administering the same; one copy to be filed in the Register’s office, and the other to be sent to the Land Office at Washington. A purchaser of public land is only required to make written application to the Register of the local land office for the tract desired to be entered, and to pay to the Receiver the purchase money therefor. Blank forms of such application are furnished gratuitously at the Land Office where the tract is desired to be entered. SOLDIERS’ HOMESTEAD LAW OF 1872. The following is the full text of the Amendatory Soldiers’ Homestead Bill, approved by the President on the 3d of April, 1872.