wet and fine weather, deduced from the moon’s quarters! How long will it be before we get rid of this queer old astrological superstition? [8] The “Lonja” is a feature in the commercial towns of Spanish America. It is not only the Merchants’ Exchange, but their club, billiard-room, and smoking-room; in fact, their “lounge,” and I fancy the two words are connected with one another. We made a few rough observations of the thermometer and barometer during our stay in Mexico. The barometer stands at about 22½ inches, and our thermometer gave the boiling point of water at 199 degrees. We could never get eggs well boiled in the high lands, and attributed this, whether rightly or not I cannot say, to the low temperature of boiling water. [Illustration: Group of Ecclesiastics, Mexico.] CHAPTER IV. TACUBAYA. PACHUCA. REAL DEL MONTE. We went one morning to the house of our friend Don Pepe, and were informed by the servant as we entered the courtyard that the niño, the child, was up stairs waiting for us. “The Child” seemed an odd term to apply to a young man of five and twenty. The young ladies, in the same way are called the nias, and keep the appellation until they marry. We went off with the niño to his uncle’s house at Tacubaya, on the rising ground above Mexico. In the garden there we found a vegetation such as one would find in southern Europe—figs, olives, peaches, roses, and many other European trees and flowers—growing luxuriantly, but among them the passion-flower, which produces one of the most delicious of fruits, the granadita, and other semi-tropical plants. The live creatures in the garden, however, were anything but European in their character. There were numbers of immense butterflies of the most brilliant colours; and the garden was full of hummingbirds, darting backwards and forwards with wonderful swiftness, and dipping their long beaks into the flowers. They call them chupa-mirtos—myrtle-suckers, and the Indians take them by blowing water upon them from a cane, and catching them before they have recovered from the shock. One day we bought a cage full of them, and tried to keep them alive in our room by feeding them with sugar and water, but the poor little things pined away. In old times the Mexicans were famous for their ornaments of humming-bird’s feathers. The taste with which they arranged feathers of many shades of colour, excited the admiration of the conquerors; and the specimens we may still see in museums are beautiful things, and their great age has hardly impaired the brilliancy of their tints. This curious art was practised by the highest nobility, and held in great esteem, just as working tapestry used to be in Europe, only that the feather-work was mostly done by men. It is a lost art, for one cannot take much account of such poor things as are done now, in which, moreover, the designs are European. In this garden at Tacubaya we saw for the first time the praying Mantis, and caught him as he sat in his