It is significant of the deep-rooted tendency to the _pars pro toto_ method of counting that when peoples who are at a less developed stage adopt such a continuous unit of time as our seven-day week, they do not regard it as a unity, but put the part for the whole. Weeks have been introduced into the Society Islands, and the word _hebedoma_ has there been adopted to denote a week; it is however less frequently used by the people than the word ‘sabbath’. When a native wishes to say that he has been absent for six weeks on a journey, he usually says six sabbaths or a moon and two sabbaths[1188]. Some of the Islamite Malays of Sumatra count periods of time in Sundays, others in Fridays, others again in market-days[1189]; these are therefore the Christian, the Islamite, and the native methods of reckoning weeks that here appear, but still the counting is performed by the _pars pro toto_ method. The Old Bulgarian word _nedelja_ really means ‘day without work’, Sunday, but has come to mean ‘week’[1190]. _The continuous time-reckoning_ arises neither from the daily course of the sun--which indeed is a unit but has no natural sub-divisions--nor yet from the year, the consistent length of which is at first concealed by the variation of the natural phases. Moreover the year, though sub-divided, is divided into parts (the seasons) which are indefinite and fluctuating in their number, duration, and limits. The only natural phenomenon which from the very beginning meets the demands of the continuous reckoning is the moon. It is a fact of importance that the course of the moon from the first appearance of the new moon to the disappearance of the old is so short a period that it may be surveyed even by the undeveloped intellect. The decisive factor however is that not only is the lunar month in itself a limited and continuous period of fixed length, but it has also a natural sub-division into parts of equal length, viz. days, each of which is clearly distinguishable from its predecessor and successor by the shape of the moon and its position in the sky at sunrise and sunset. However these phases and positions also are at first described concretely, and not numbered. The months, like other periods of time, are counted by the _pars pro toto_ method in new moons, or commonly in ‘moons’, as the days are counted in suns. This is in itself a shifting mode of reckoning, which proceeds from an arbitrarily chosen incidental point. With primitive man’s undeveloped faculty of counting it can only embrace a few months; the months of pregnancy, which are so frequently counted, form a period which is quite sufficiently long.