The celebrated Christy Ethnographical Collection has now been added to the British Museum, and for the first time it may be said that the country which has the best opportunities of studying prehistoric and semi-barbarous peoples in all the countries of the world, is not behind its neighbours in its collection of objects for promoting that study. Mr Henry Christy, who died in 1865, left his wonderful collection to four trustees, to deal with it as they might think fit in the best interests of science. These trustees offered the collection to the national Museum on the very wise condition, that it was not to become the property of the Museum until it should be publicly exhibited there. This proviso has prevented the collection being packed away into cellars for an indefinite time, a fate which has befallen too many treasures intrusted to the national Museum. The delegates of the French Chambers of Commerce who accompanied M. de Lesseps during the late survey of the Panama Canal works, have now returned with hopeful tales of the ultimate success of the grand project for uniting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Briefly put, the matter stands thus: let money be supplied, and the work can be brought to a glorious termination. M. de Lesseps affirms that the canal can be opened for traffic as soon as 1889; and he points to the circumstance that all contracts expire in 1888. But contractors are but mortal, and it is believed by experts that the hard Culebra rocks, which present the most formidable obstacle to the prosecution of the work, cannot be cut through in less than five years. These rocks are more than a mile in length, and in some spots they rise to a height of more than one hundred and fifty feet above the canal level. In a recent article on ‘The National Egg-supply,’ a contemporary gives some interesting particulars regarding the productiveness of different kinds of fowls. The laying power of each hen is said to be on an average one hundred eggs per annum. This seems a small average. Some fowls will lay as many as two hundred and twenty per annum, but the larger proportion yield not more than from sixty-five to one hundred and twenty per annum. Care and proper food have much to do with productiveness, as all keepers of fowls know well. A large portion of our egg-supply comes from Ireland, where the birds are not nearly so well tended as they are in England and Scotland. A score of Irish eggs selected at random from a large crate weighed a little under two pounds. The eggs from good Dorkings will weigh six ounces more than this. The eggs from Spanish fowls weigh two pounds fourteen ounces per score; while those from Leghorns weigh as much as three pounds for the same quantity. The total cost of our annual egg-supply is calculated to be nearly seven millions sterling.