We learn that the Joint Commission appointed by England, France, Italy, and Greece for the provisional government of Egypt, is meeting with fair success; bad as the financial state of that country has been. The American "Egyptian Improvement Company," with a capital of forty millions of dollars, is paying an annual dividend of six per cent.; which is extraordinary for these times. New explorations along the Nile, near Luxor, have unearthed a number of royal tombs, with extremely interesting paintings, sarcophagi, and hieroglyphic inscriptions. More notable still; in a Coptic convent in Upper Egypt, there has been found a Greek Codex of the whole New Testament; believed by palæographers to belong to the third century. Among other things, it omits the concluding verses of the last chapter of the Gospel of Mark, and attaches the name of Barnabas to the Epistle to the Hebrews; not containing, moreover, the reputed Epistle of Barnabas which was found attached to the Sinaitic Codex. _March 26th, '31._ A telegram directly from Peking to Washington announces the extension to all the provinces in China of the decree, already for a number of years enforced in the great cities, totally prohibiting the sale of opium; except by a few government appointees, at prescription of registered physicians. * * * * * The Euphrates Valley Railroad is almost finished. The main line of communication between Europe and Asia will pass through Smyrna, Aleppo, Bagdad, and Bassora on the Persian Gulf. A road will also run from Jaffa through Jerusalem, and will connect with Damascus. Parlor, sleeping, and hotel cars will be placed on all these roads at once, furnished by an Indianapolis firm on contract. By the completion, many years ago, of the trans-Indian line of telegraph and railroad, and now of that from Calcutta along the Brahmapootra River and through Southern China to Canton, the girdle around the world is almost completed. Puck might travel it now in less than forty minutes. Behring's Strait will, in a few months, be crossed by the Asian-American cable, and a line of steamers, owned partly by Russian and partly by American stockholders, will soon make that channel a ferry between the Continents. The greatest tunnel in the world is that being constructed through a spur of the Himalayas, in Northeastern India. The new observatory on Mount Everest is furnished with three first-class telescopes, and other needful appliances for astronomical observation. * * * * *