As a humble communicant of a Protestant Church, personally an unworthy Christian, I have taken the pains to give a very abridged history of what is passing in France, and registering a feeble public protest against it. JOHN FRANCIS LOCKETT. _Henderson, Ky., Jan., 1907._ A DUCK HUNT IN KANSAS CEDAR VALE, KANS., Nov. 18, 1906. Dear Trotwood: I have read your Christmas goose hunt and think it great. Let me take you a duck hunt in this territory, the land of the Osages, the richest tribe in America. Their pasture lands lie some fifteen miles to the south, and extend for forty to fifty miles to the south and west of here, a vast tract of rich grazing land settled along the larger streams. Beaver Creek heads in the state and flows in a general direction nearly south. Salt Creek, some eight or ten miles east of Beaver, also flows nearly south. In order to secure a supply of water for their herds of Texas cattle, the cattlemen that hold leases on the grass land between the two creeks have constructed ponds, or tanks, in the heads of the draws and ravines that start off in either direction, and carry the surplus water of early spring. By throwing up a bank of earth across a draw near its head a pond from 150 to 200 yards in length and from 50 to 75 yards wide and eight to ten feet deep is secured, and this usually lasts the year round. In the spring and latter part of our winter the ducks, and sometimes geese, stop for several weeks to pick up corn after the cattle that are fed along the creeks, and it is then that the ducks use these ponds as a roosting place. Situated, as they are, five or six miles from any human habitation, back on a high prairie, not even a bush or tree in sight, the lay of the country sloping to the east and west, the ducks appear to think they have found a safe retreat from the merciless hunter. Not so, however. It is here that the pot-shot hunter is in his glory. Sometimes, in early spring, just after a northwester has blown itself out, and we get a few warm days, I have seen these ponds full of ducks; yes, and sitting out in the grass on each side for a good hundred yards in each direction. It was just such a time as this, during the first days of March, 1903, that I and my good Swede friend, Norling, found ourselves camped about a mile below one of the tanks in a small draw that ran off in the direction of Beaver Creek. We had selected this particular pond for our night’s sport because we knew that a bunch of some 2,000 head of cattle was being fed over on Beaver about five miles away, and then we had stopped at the pond before going into camp to see if there were any signs. It did not require an old hunter to see the signs there. The damp ground around the edge of the pond was strewn with loose feathers and stamped and patted where the ducks had roosted along the water’s edge