The Week. . 43 



The nature of the superincumbent beds being clay, 

 points decidedly to precipitation in still waters, or those 

 having little current, and such being the case, the keys, 

 if lost overboard from a boat, would in the course of 

 time sink by their own weight through the soft impalpable 

 mud to the denser material of the old beach overlying the 

 limestone. 



Several instances were given of such settlement. 



T. E. R 



Aet. XI— The Week 

 By H. K. Rusden. 



[Bead 21st December, 1874.] 



Circumstances have lately led me to investigate the 

 subject of The Week, so far as the limited time and oppor- 

 tunities at my disposal permitted, and as a result I have a 

 proposal to make, involving I conceive an improvement, 

 equally important, desirable, and practicable. Before how- 

 ever explaining it in detail, it will be proper to glance at 

 the natural history of the present conventional institution. 



Materials for this investigation I have found to be meagre 

 and scattered. I think, however, that there exist sufficient 

 data to justify the decisive conclusion that the septenary 

 cycle comes to us from the remotest antiquity ; that is — 

 from a period altogether prehistoric. The wide distribution 

 of the week over Southern and Northern Asia, and also in 

 Northern Europe, long before our era, is, I believe, unques- 

 tionable. This in itself would have little significance, were 

 it not for a curious point of resemblance, which is unac- 

 countable on any other theory than that of a common origin. 

 It is very remarkable that the Scandinavians, the Chaldasans, 

 the Persians, and the Hindoos, have always named the days 

 from the planets, and in the same very peouliar order; 

 peculiar in its curious variation from their relative astrono- 

 mical order — real or supposed. The true order would be of 

 course Sunday, Wednesday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday, 

 Thursday, Saturday ; after the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Moon, 

 Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The Ptolemaic order would be 

 Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, 

 Saturday. The deviation of all weeks from both these 

 arrangements is identical and universal, and should therefore 



