Although the thousand circumstances which incessantly affect the state of debt and credit prevent the ordinary course of exchange from being almost ever precisely at par, its fluctuations are confined within narrow limits, and if direct exchange is unfavorable between two countries this can often be obviated by the interposition of bills drawn on other countries where an opposite state of matters prevails. What do We Mean by “The Old Moon in the New Moon’s Arms”? “Earth-shine,” in astronomy, is the name given to the faint light visible on the part of the moon not illuminated by the sun, due to the illumination of that portion by the light which the earth reflects on her. It is most conspicuous when the illuminated part of the disc is at its smallest, as soon after new moon. This phenomenon is popularly described as “the old moon in the new moon’s arms.” The Story in a Bowling Alley[27] From the “stone age” onward the probabilities are that man has always had some kind of bowling game. Bowling, as we know today, is an indoor adaptation of, and an improvement upon, the old Dutch game of “nine-pins.” This game was brought from Holland by those colonists who settled Manhattan Island in 1623. Washington Irving, in his story, “Rip Van Winkle,” refers to the old Dutch fairy tale, that the rolling thunder on the mountain tops of the Catskill was the noise made by the rolling balls as the elfs and gnomes engaged in their favorite pastimes of bowling. That little section of New York City known as Bowling Green is the original spot which, in 1732, Peter Bayard, Peter Jay and John Chambers leased for eleven years and enclosed for a bowling green. With the influx of German immigrants, who brought with them a game similar to the Dutch game, additional popularity was given to the sport. [Illustration: LOOP THE LOOP RETURN] The game was originally played on the bare ground. The Germans used a board about a foot wide on which to roll the ball, and then improved on this by using cohesive mineral substances solidly packed together. At an early date, the Dutch had covered the alley with a roof, and later enclosed it in a rough shed, to protect it and make play possible in any kind of weather. But, great as these improvements were over the crudeness of previous centuries, they are not worthy of comparison with a modern bowling academy. In the best hard-wood section of the United States, one of the large bowling equipment manufacturers owns about thirty thousand acres of maple. From this raw material is gathered the chief stock that goes into bowling alleys and the pins. The company has its own logging crews that cut the timber and pile it on flat cars, whence it is transported over a private railroad until it arrives at the company sawmills. Here the raw material enters upon the manufacturing process.