, to the annual) rotation of
the Ursa Major around Polaris, and likewise refers to the fact that
about four thousand years ago, the circular sweep of the circumpolar
constellations was far more striking than at present. After meeting
on this common ground our lines of investigation part company and go
wide asunder, nor am I able to follow some of Dr. March's
conclusions such as, for instance, his opinion that the fylfot was a
sign of a "diurnal rotation" suggested by "the rising and setting of
the sun and moon when the spectator looked at them with his back to
the north." On the other hand I am indebted to him for much valuable
information relating to the rune or futhorc tir, to which I shall
refer later.

3 Besides the word _coatl_=twin, the Mexicans had another term to
express some thing double, in pairs. A plant with two shoots was
named xolotl. Double agave plants, or maize when occasionally met
with, were regarded with superstition and named me-xolotl. The
pretty little parroquets, popularly known as "love-birds" from their
habit of constant association, in pairs, were named xolotl. The
circumstance that the term for birds'-down was also xolotl may
explain why the down-feathers of eagles and other birds were
employed and played a certain role in ritual observances. They
expressed and conveyed the sound of a word which meant something
double and could therefore be used to symbolize a variety of
meanings relating to multiplication or propagation. That the
Mexicans figuratively connected birds'-down with generation is
proven by the well-known myth of the birth of Huitzilopochtli from
the union of a ball of birds'-down and a goddess named "she with the
petticoat of serpents" (Sahagun, book III, chap. I).

Tufts of birds'-down figure, in the B. N. MS., on the shield of the
female ancestress of the human race, one of whose numerous titles
was toci,="our grandmother," to express which the figure of a citli
or hare was sometimes employed in pictography. Of her it was said,
that she bore only twins, a figure of speech meaning great
productiveness, just as the female divinity is also termed "the
woman with 400 breasts" (text to p. 29, Vatican Codex, Kingsborough,
vols. II and V). In the text to the Telleriano-Remensis Co