the purpose of procuring the mineral. The Indian name of this mountain is Bece, which, Dr. Dawson suggested, is the same with the “Mexican” name for knife, itztli, an etymology which may be of Nahuatlac origin. Mr. T. C. Weston, of the Geological Survey, also noted in 1883 the finding of a flake of obsidian in connection with a layer of buffalo bones occurring in alluvium, and evidently of considerable antiquity, near Fort McLeod, Alberta. The nearest source of such a material is the Yellowstone Park region. The coast tribes of British Columbia have been traders for untold generations, exchanging oolactin oil for such material as they could make implements from, and there seems to be no doubt that the Mound-builders of Ohio, Wisconsin, and Kentucky were also acquainted with obsidian, which they could only have obtained by the process of barter. It was thus either to be found in the regions from which the Nahua are thought to have come, or else obtainable through the channels of trade. If, then, it be granted that the Chichimec Nahua were acquainted with obsidian and its properties before their entrance upon the Plateau of Anahuac (a hypothesis which is strengthened by the material differences of workmanship between their tools and weapons made of this material and those of the aboriginal peoples of Mexico), sufficient time had elapsed for their development of a cult, which, at the era of the Conquest, exhibited traces of a very considerable antiquity. It was, naturally, as a hunting people that they employed weapons of obsidian. The herds of deer on the flesh of which they chiefly lived roamed the steppes, and proof abounds that the customs of the chase strongly influenced the religious ideas of the early Nahua. Certain of their gods, indeed, seem to have been developed from cervine forms, for among barbarous races the animal worshipped is that which provides the tribe with its staple food, or, more correctly, a great eponymous figure of that animal is adored—for example, the Great Deer, who sends the smaller deer to keep the savage in life. In like manner barbarous fisherfolk are wont to worship the Great Fish, which sends them its progeny or its subjects to serve as food. These deer gods or hunting gods in some way connected with the deer—Itzpapalotl, Itzcuêyê, Mixcoatl, Camaxtli—had also stellar or solar attributes. The deer was slain by the obsidian weapon, which, therefore, came to be regarded as the magical weapon, that by which food was procured. In the course of time it assumed a sacred significance, the hunting gods themselves came to wield it, and it was thought of as coming from the stars or the heavens where the gods dwelt, in precisely the same manner as flint arrowheads were regarded by the peasantry of Europe as “elf-arrows” or “thunder-stones”—that is, as something supernatural, falling from above.