Tlaloc combined two aspects, a beneficent and a terrible; and this is not unnatural, for rain in Mexico is more often than not accompanied by thunder, and the fertilizer is therefore also the smiter. As the god of fertility maize belonged to him, though not altogether by right, for according to one legend he stole it after it had been discovered by other gods concealed in the heart of a mountain. The great importance of Tlaloc and the Tlaloque in the worship of the Ancient Mexicans may be gathered from the fact that no less than five of the twenty month-festivals were dedicated to them, and that Tlaloc shared with Uitzilopochtli the great pyramid at Tenochtitlan. The most important of the Tlaloque was Opochtli, a fishing and hunting god, the inventor of nets and the bird-spear. Closely connected with Tlaloc was his wife Chalchiuhtlicue (Pl. II, 2), goddess of running water, said also to be sister of the Tlaloque and mother of the Mimizcoa. This goddess, under the name Matlalcue, was especially worshipped at Tlaxcala, and is easily recognized by her tasselled headband and cape, and often by a stepped nose-ornament. The most important festivals to these deities took place on mountain-tops, for it is there that the rain-clouds gather before they sweep over the plain, and closely associated with them was the worship of mountains represented by small figures called Tepictoton, with hair dressed in two horns, whose sacrificial victims were similarly adorned. The valley-dwellers of Michoacan around Pazcuaro revered a goddess of fertility and rain, named Cueravahperi, casting the hearts of her victims into certain hot springs which were supposed to give birth to the rain-clouds. In connection with her worship we are first brought into contact with a strange and gruesome rite, peculiar to this part of America, and performed exclusively in honour of agricultural deities. The victim was flayed, and the priest performed a ceremonial dance wrapped in the fresh skin. The practice seems to be symbolical of vegetation in the early spring, apparently dead, but containing within the germ of life and fertility, and no doubt was originally intended to assist by imitative magic the process of nature in renewing the food-supply. Corresponding to this goddess, and, like her, regarded as the mother of the gods, was the Mexican Teteoinnan or Tozi, a deity held in especial reverence by the Tlaxcalans and Olmec, and perhaps borrowed from the latter people. She was in particular the goddess of ripe maize and healing herbs, patroness of doctors, midwives and bath attendants (for the steam-bath played an important part in childbirth) and diviners. She too was connected with the flaying-sacrifice, and was sometimes pictured as clad in the victim’s skin; otherwise her attributes are the same as those of Tlazolteotl (see below) and she carries a broom. The maize-god _par excellence_ was Cinteotl, her son (though occasionally