Although political and financial conditions in Mexico frequently arouse a passing agitation in the minds of British people, the antiquities of that extraordinary land, various as Greece and mysterious as Egypt, have failed to appeal to them with the same degree of interest. We have not yet, perhaps, quite recovered from the amazement with which in our own day we have seen the secret gates of the East unlocked and the prodigies of Mesopotamia and the endless dynasties of the Nile emerge therefrom. Yet an archæology less venerable, but no less notable, pleads with us for recognition from a continent so closely associated with the spirit of modernity that we can scarcely believe in its ability to present us with the credentials of respectable antiquity. American scientists, however, have in recent years successfully addressed themselves to the problems of Isthmian research, and the antiquaries of Germany and France have, in certain respects, even improved upon their endeavours. Great Britain alone remains insensible to the lure of old Mexico, and small indeed is the band of workers that she has given to this department of archæology. No manifestation of the life and thought of ancient Mexico so well deserves the attention of British students of antiquity as its picturesque if bizarre religion. Our position in folklore is pre-eminent; indeed we may with justice claim the reconstruction of traditional science as due to the efforts of British scholarship. As the English word “folklore” is in world-wide use, so is the terminology of the science it denotes replete with English expressions; yet in British works which deal with traditional lore the Mexican analogies employed are almost invariably quoted at second-hand, sources of the most unsatisfactory description are drawn upon to illustrate Mexican belief, and it is obvious that the few modern treatises which have sought to explain this most involved of all mythologies are not sufficiently taken advantage of by authorities on folklore.