Garcilasso de la Vega, _Royal Commentaries of the Yncas_, pt. i. bk. iv. chaps. 1-3, bk. vi. chaps. 20-22 (vol. i. pp. 292-299, vol. ii. pp. 155-164, Markham’s translation); P. de Cieza de Leon, _Travels_, p. 134 (Markham’s translation); _id._, _Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru_, pp. 85 _sq._ (Markham’s translation); Acosta, _Natural and Moral History of the Indies_, bk. v. chap. 15 (vol. ii. pp. 331-333, Hakluyt Society). Professor E. B. Tylor discredits Garcilasso’s description of these Peruvian priestesses on the ground that it resembles Plutarch’s account of the Roman Vestals (_Numa_, 9 _sq._) too closely to be independent; he thinks that “the apparent traces of absorption from Plutarch invalidate whatever rests on Garcilasso de la Vega’s unsupported testimony.” See his _Researches into the Early History of Mankind_, 3rd Ed., pp. 249-253. In particular, he stumbles at the statement that an unfaithful Peruvian priestess was buried alive. But that statement was made by Cieza de Leon, who travelled in Peru when Garcilasso was a child, and whose book, or rather the first part of it, containing the statement, was published more than fifty years before that of Garcilasso. Moreover, when we understand that the punishment in question was based on a superstition which occurs independently in many parts of the world, the apparent improbability of the coincidence vanishes. As to the mode of kindling the sacred fire, Professor Tylor understands Plutarch to say that the sacred fire at Rome was kindled, as in Peru, by a burning-glass. To me it seems that Plutarch is here speaking of a Greek, not a Roman usage, and this is made still clearer when his text is read correctly. For the words ὑπὸ Μήδων, περὶ δὲ τὰ Μιθριδιατικά should be altered to ὑπὸ Μαίδων περὶ τὰ Μιθριδιατικά. See H. Pomtow in _Rheinisches Museum_, N. F. li. (1896) p. 365, and my note on Pausanias, x. 19. 4 (vol. v. p. 331). Thus Plutarch gives two instances when a sacred fire was extinguished and had to be relit with a burning-glass; but both instances are Greek, neither is Roman. The Greek mode of lighting a sacred fire by means of a crystal is described also in the Orphic poem on precious stones, verses 177 _sqq._ (_Orphica_, ed. E. Abel, p. 115). Nor were the Greeks and Peruvians peculiar in this respect. The Siamese and Chinese have also been in the habit of kindling a sacred fire by means of a metal mirror or burning-glass. See Pallegoix, _Description du royaume Thai ou Siam_, ii. 55; A. Bastian, _Die Völker des östlichen Asien_, iii. 516; J. H. Plath, “Die Religion und der Cultus der alten Chinesen,” _Abhandlungen der k. bayer. Akademie der Wissen_, i. Cl. ix. (1863) pp. 876 _sq._ Again, the full description of the golden garden of the Peruvian Vestals, which may sound to us fabulous, is given by Cieza de Leon in a work (the _Second Part of the Chronicle of