The foregoing illustrations, to which more could be added, clearly establish that the checkered design was associated with the symbols of earth, heat and water. It obviously expressed the idea embodied in the Nahuatl word xotlac=the heated earth; literally, glowing embers, also budding and opening flowers. It was emblematic of the fall of the rain or earth-wine upon the heated soil. In the temazcalli the same life-producing union of the elements took place and aided human growth and health. It would seem as though the appellation xoch-i-calli, bestowed upon the sweat-house by the native medicine-woman, expressed the same train of thought. Moreover, it is noteworthy, that the sound of the first part of this name and of xo-tlac recurs in the Maya word for vase in general, ho-och. The checker-board design would naturally have been employed in connection with the festivals, associated with esoteric rites, which were held in celebration of the union of the Heaven and Earth at the commencement of the rainy season. It would, naturally, therefore, have been used as a decoration on the drinking vessels employed in the distribution of fermented drinks for vivifying and curative purposes. It is met with on Peruvian drinking bowls, as proven by several examples in the Royal Ethnographical Museum in Berlin, for instance. It is curious to note as an interesting analogy that the same checkered design frequently adorns the ancient Egyptian drinking bowls represented in the hieroglyphic writings. I have also observed it in some ancient Greek drinking vessels, preserved at the Imperial Hermitage Museum at St. Petersburg, where it decorated the bowl itself or the garments of Bacchantes figured thereupon. It is also met with in ancient Peruvian textile fabrics, in black and white, as on one figure vase in the Berlin Museum, and, needless to remark, it is a Scotch clan tartan. Its adoption as the basis for chess-boards of ancient Egypt seems to indicate that there it also signified the Above and Below and that the game was thought of as an exemplification of the eternal contest between the powers of Heaven and Earth, light and darkness, etc. We look to specialists for information as to the origin, meaning and employment in Egypt and Greece of this primitive and almost universal design. [Illustration.] Figure 42.