* Copious details as to the sacraments, human sacrifices, paste figures of gods, and identity of god and victim, will be found in Sahagun's second and third books. The _magical_ character of the ritual deserves particular attention. See many examples of gods made of flour and eaten in Liebrecht's _Zur Volkskunde_, "Der aufgegessene Gott," p. 436. It will be noted that the feasts of the corn goddess, like the rites of Demeter, were celebrated with torch-dances. The ritual of the month Quecholli (iii. 33, 144) is a mere medicine hunt, as Tanner and the Red Indians call it, a procuring of magical virtue for the arrows, as in the Zuni mysteries to- day. Compare _Report of Bureau of Ethnology_, vol. ii., "Zuni Prey Gods". From the special ritual of Huitzilopochtli Mr. Tylor conjectures that this "inextricable compound parthenogenetic god may have been originally" a nature deity whose life and death were connected with the year".* This theory is based on the practice at the feast called Panquetzaliztli.** "His paste idol was shot through with an arrow," says Mr. Tylor, "and being thus killed, was divided into morsels and eaten; wherefore the ceremony was called _Teoqualo_, or 'god-eating,' and this was associated with the winter solstice." M. Reville says that this feast coincided with our month of December, the beginning of the cold and dry season, Huitzilopochtli would die with the verdure, the flowers and all the beauteous adornments of spring and summer; but like Adonis, like Osiris, and so many other solar deities, he only died to live and to return again. Before identifying him with the sun, it may be remarked that the Aztec feast of the return of the gods was celebrated in the twelfth month and the paste sacrifice of Huitzilopochtli was in the fifteenth. There were eighteen months in the Aztec year, and the year began on the 2nd of February. The return of the gods was, therefore, in September, and the paste sacrifice of Huitzilopochtli in December. Clearly the god who dies in the winter solstice cannot be thought to "return" late in September. Huitzilopochtli had another feast on the first day of the ninth month, that is, between June and July, when much use was made of floral decorations, and "they offered him the first flowers of the year," although flowers were used two months earlier, in the seventh month and in the fourth month.*** * _Primitive Culture_, ii. 307; Clavigero, _Messico_, ii. 17, 81. ** Sahagun, ii. 15, and Appendix, iii. 2, 3. *** Ibid. i. ii 9.