WEEDS, the name given to all those plants which grow wild in cultivated grounds, and injure the crops; which they do both by choking them, and by exhausting the soil. Those weeds which are annuals or biennials, as charlock, yellow rattle, and melilot, may gradually be got quit of by merely cultivating, for a succession of years, such plants as are to be cut before the seeds of the weeds are fully ripe. Perennial weeds, such as couch grass, can only be removed from the ground by repeated and careful and for this purpose, crops which require much hoeing are advantageously planted, and recourse is bad to summer fallowing in fields, and frequent weeding in gardens, Thistles and other Jarge weeds are frequently pulled in corn fields before the corn comes into ear, and to prevent their seeding, they are cut in pastures. Sedges and rushes, p which s ring up in great abundance in clamp grounds, disappear on thorough draining. Leafy crops which thickly f cover the soil, prevent the growth of many weeds by the exclusion of air W and light. Weeds which have been rooted up form excellent compost for manure.
Those which make their appearance in fallow grounds serve for green manuring when they are plowed down.
WEEK (Goth. Vico; Old High-Geiman, = order, cycle (4); Lat. Vicis; Gr. Iledbomas, Sal.baton; Ileb. Shabna, from Sheba, seven) designates generally a period of seven days. It was probably first instituted as a kind of broad subdivision of the period ical month, corresponding to the four quarters of the moon, or about 71 days. Although found as a civil institution among some nations at b Hindus, Assyrians, Persians, etc., it is only with the Jews earliest time--e.g., with the ews that we see a religious signifi cation given to the concluding or seventh day of that itself. Both tteir cosmog ony and legislation are connected with it. The Sabbath ath (q.v.) is emphatically the day of rest, while seven weeks after the Passover, the Pentecost or feast of weeks takes place, etc. (see SEVEN). It is doubtful Passover, it was through the Jews that this Coin putation of weeks was introduced to the Egyptians, but it is certain that the latter at an early period counted seven periodical days, naming them according to the seven planets then assumed. The application of the names of tli4 planets to the days of tlle week in the order they now stand, originated in this way: It was an astrological notion that each planet in order presided over an hour of the day, the order, according to their distances from the earth, being, on the geocentric system, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the sun, Veims, Mercury, the moon. Assuming Saturn to preside over the first hour of Saturday, and assigning to each succeeding hour a planet iu order, the 22d hour will fall again to Saturn, the 23c1 to Jupiter, the 24th to Mars, and the first hour of the next to the sun; in the same way, the first hour of the followino. clay falls to the moon, and so on. From Alexandria this seven-days' week was imported, together with the names of the individual days, to the Greeks—who previously divided their months into three decades—and to the Romans, about the time of Christ. Rome had previously counted her periods by eight days, the eighth day itself being originally called Nundince—a term later applied to the whole cycle—as returning mono quoque die, when the country people ' were in the habit of coming to town for the purposes of business, and chiefly to inquire after public news, the changes in government and legislation, vacant places, and the rest. But the seven days' cycle soon found great favor among the Romans, owing partly, per haps, to the spread of Egyptian astrology, although the change was not officially intro duced before Constantine. It is certain that the Jewish name Sabbath came into use in
Rome, and from Rome it spread to all the Romanic languages, even into the German. It survives in the Italian &Mato, the Spanish Sabado, the French Samedi (Sabbati dies), and the German Samburtac. which afterward became Sanistag. In the same manner, the Latin septimana (the Greek hebdomas) had become the modern designation for week in the Italian settimana, Span. semana, French semaine, and even in the Irish seeldmaine. The Codex Theodosianus is the first document whieh adopts the term septimana in the meaning of weeks. The Jews, as well as the early Christians, had no special names for the single days, but their number from the previous Sabbath, beginning with Sunday, as the first after the Sabbath, and ending with Friday, as the sixth after the previous, or eve (Ereb) of the next Sabbath. After a very short time, however, young Christianity, which in the same manner had endeavored to count from the feria secunda, or second day after Sunday, to the Septima (or Saturday), had to fall back again upon the old heathen names, previously introduced in Gaul, Germany, etc., by the heathen Romans. The Sunday, or dies Solis, alone was changed in many of the Romanic lan guages in accordance with the new creed. It was called Kyriake, dies Dominicus, or Dominica, the day of the Lord, a term which in Italian became Domenica, in Spanish Domingo, and Dimanche in French. The Germanic Prontac (from frou = dominietts) occurs but once. It is very curious to notice how the names of the five days of the week which followed those named after the sun and moon, became Germanized, as it were, or the names of the originally imported gods translated into those of the Germanic divinities. Thus, the day of Mars became that of Zit] (see TYR). Mercury became Wodan; and the fourth day was called after the latter, in Dutch, English, and Scandinavi an; while in Germany it was simply called the middle of the week = Mittwoch. The day of Jupiter became the day of Thor = Thursday, Donnerstag ; while the Dies Veneris was transformed into the day of Freya, the wife of Odin (Wodan). The day of Saturnus, retained under this name in some northern tongues, became a langardage, or bathing day, in others; while in upper Germany it remained a Sunday-eve (feria ante dominicam) or Samstag (see above). From recent discoveries of Assyriologists, it seems certain that the Assyrians, and through them probably the other Semitic nations, derived their week of seven clays from the Aecadians or early Turanian inhabitants of Babylonia, who also observed the seventh day as a day of rest. To this remarkable people are also to be traced the planetary names which we still give to the days of the week. The Arabs, like the Jews, count their days (beginning and ending with sunset) by sevens, without giving them planetary names. Greeks, Slaves, and Finns also count their days from Sunday, instead of naming them. The French revolution altered the seven-days' week into a decade of 10 days; but the new computation introduced in 1793 was abrogated again in 1805. The " weeks of years" in Hebrew prophetical poetry (like the Roman 671720111713 hebdomadte) indicates cycles of seven years.—See Ideler's Chronologk (1831); Grimm's Deutsche Mythologic, (1835); and Lenormant's La chez les Chaldeens (1874).