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t myself with pointing out here that besides the foregoing testimony about the Pleiades, the native name for which was the miec=the many, or the tianquiztli=the marketplace, there are records proving that the cult of the planet Venus was a firmly established feature of the native religion at the time of the Conquest. Sahagun records that the Nahuatl names for this planet were citlalpul or hueycitlallin both signifying "the great star." "In the great temple of Mexico an edifice named ilhuicatitlan [literally, the land of the sky] consisted of a great, high column, on which the morning star was painted.... Captives were sacrificed in front of this column annually, at the period when the star re-appeared" (_op. cit._ appendix to book II). With regard to the connection of the Pleiades with the beginning of the Mexican cycle, it is interesting to note Herr Andree's statements that the most intimate connection of the star-group with the thoughts of primitive people, would naturally take place in such localities where its periodical movements coincided with the changes of season, wind and weather which affected agriculture. A survey of the data presented by Herr Andree shows that the cult of the Pleiades attained its greatest development amongst tribes inhabiting a southerly latitude. It was in South America, indeed, that the Peruvians, alongside of their highly developed sun-cult, rendered homage and offered sacrifices to the Pleiades. In Mexico, the cult of the Pleiades appears as intimately associated with that of the sun and to have assumed importance only in historical and comparatively recent times, probably when the periodicity of the sun's movements had been taught or recognized and the sign _ollin_, which is an exact presentation of the annual course of the sun, had been invented and adopted as a symbol. I have already pointed out that this sign occurs on the calendar-stone, for instance, which has a human face in its centre, bearing two numerals on the forehead and obviously symbolizing the union of two in one. In other instances the centre displays the eye, or star symbol and conveys the suggestion that the "four movements" of the circumpolar constellations were thereby symbolized. It may be that, in ancient Mexico, the two symbols, respectively referring to the movements of the sun and of the circumpolar star-groups, were emblematic of the two different cults or religions which existed alongside of each other. The f
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