The inference is that the humming-bird whose name enters into that of Huitzilopochtli, and whose feathers were worn on his heel, had been the totem of an Aztec kindred before Huitzilopochtli, like Picus, was anthropomorphised. On the other hand, if Huitzilopochtli was once the Baiame of the Aztecs, their Guide in their wanderings, he might, in myth, be mixed up with a totem or other worshipful animal. "Before this god was represented in human form, he was merely a little humming-bird, Huitziton; but as the anthropomorphic processes advanced, the bird became an attribute, emblem, or symbol of the deity."* If Huitzilopochtli is said to have given the Aztecs fire, that boon is usually regarded by many races, from Normandy to Australia, as the present given to men by a bird; for example, the fire-crested wren.** Thus understood, the ornithological element in Huitzilopochtli is purely totemic. While accepting the reduction of him to a hummingbird, M. Reville ingeniously concludes that he was "a derivative form of the sun, and especially of the sun of the fair season". If the bird was worshipped, it was not as a totem, but as "the divine messenger of the spring," like "the plover among the Latins".*** Attempts have been made, with no great success, to discover the cosmical character of the god from the nature of his feasts. * J. G. Muller, op. cit. i. p. 596. ** Bosquet, La Normandie Merveilleuse, Paris, 1845; Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. i.; Kuhn, Herabkunft, p. 109; Journal Anthrop. Inst., November, 1884; Sproat, Savage Life (the cuttlefish), p. 178; Bancroft, iii. 100. *** Hibbert Lectures, 1884, English trans., pp. 54, 55. The woodpecker seems a better Latin example than the plover. The Mexican calendar, "the Aztec year," as described at considerable length by Sahagun, was a succession of feasts, marked by minute and elaborate rites of a magical character. The gods of rain were frequently propitiated, so was the goddess of maize, the mountain god, the mother of the gods, and many other divinities. The general theory of worship was the adoration of a deity, first by innumerable human sacrifices, next by the special sacrifice of a man for male gods, of a woman for each goddess. The latter victims were regarded as the living images or incarnations of the divinities in each case; for no system of worship carried farther the identification of the god with the sacrifice, and of both with the officiating priest. The connection was emphasised by the priest's wearing the newly-flayed skins of the victims, just as in Greece, Egypt and Assyria the fawn-skin, or bull-hide, or goat-skin, or fish-skin of the victims is worn by the celebrants. Finally, an image of the god was made out of paste, and this was divided into morsels and eaten in a hideous sacrament by those who communicated.*