I much fear that the _tendency_ here is not on the side of writers who are looked on as ground to powder by the epithet Christian; which, indeed, be it said in passing, might well surprise a few among them. And this tendency, when resolved at any cost to attack the Bible, is as anti-scientific as when grasping at any uncritical argument in its defence. No doubt the identical character of Xochiquetzal or Maciulxochiquetzal, as goddess of the fertilizing rain and of vegetation, with that of Chalchihuitlicué or Mallalcuéyé, is a well-known fact, more certain even than the character of fish-god of Coxcox or Teocipactli. But the transformation of gods into heroes is a very common fact in all polytheisms, and most common in the kind of unconscious euhemerism from which infant peoples never free themselves. There is therefore nothing here to contradict the fact that these two divine personages, contemplated as heroes, may be taken as the two survivors of the Flood, and the ancestors of the new humanity. As to the theory of Don José Ramirez, about the symbolic pictures that have been interpreted as expressing the diluvian tradition, it is very ingenious and scientifically presented, but not so absolutely proved as M. Girard de Realle considers. But even granting its incontestability, it only removes part of the evidence which may have been unintentionally forced by those naturally disposed to see in it a parallel to Genesis; as for instance, with regard to the sending out the birds by Tezpi. Still the existence of the tradition among Mexican peoples would not be shaken, for it rests upon a whole of indubitable testimony, confirming in a striking manner the interpretation hitherto given of the "Codex Vaticanus." The valuable work in the Aztec language, and in Latin letters, compiled by a native, subsequently to the Spanish conquest, called _Codex Chimalpopoca_ by Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, who gives an analysis and partial translation of it in the first volume of his "Histoire des Nations Civilisees du Mexique," contains in its third portion a history of the suns, or successive ages of the world. Each takes its name from the way in which humanity is destroyed at its close. The first is the age of jaguars, who devour the primordial giants;[61] the second, the age of wind; at its close men lost themselves, and were carried off by the hurricane, and transformed themselves into monkeys. Houses, woods, everything was swept away by the wind. Then comes the age of fire, whose sun is called Tlalocan-Teuctli, "Lord of the lower regions," the usual appellation of Mictlanteuctli, the Mexican Pluto, which seems to point to the idea of an age of special volcanic activity. At its close, mankind is destroyed by a rain of fire, and such as do not perish escape under the form of birds. Finally, the fourth age is that of water, which immediately precedes our present epoch, and closes with the Deluge.