ign on native textile fabrics. It
figures as such, in the black garments of the female consort of
Mictlantecuhtli in the Vienna Codex, pp. 23 and 33. He denounces it as
suspect and hints that it was intimately connected with the ancient
religion.

S-shaped sacred cakes, called Xonecuilli, were made during the feast of
Macuilxochitl=five flowers, and are figured (fig. 16, no. 2) in the B. N.
MS. (p. 69) with a four-cornered cross-shaped cake of a peculiar form
(fig. 20, III), which is found associated with five dots or circles in the
Codices and also with the Tecpatl-symbol of the North (fig. 20, I and II).

A recurved staff, which is held in the hand of a deity in the B. N. MS. is
designated in the text as a _xonoquitl_ (fig. 16, no. 3). Amongst the
insignia of the "gods," sent as presents by Montezuma to Cortes upon his
landing at Vera Cruz, were three such recurved "sceptres," the
descriptions of which I have collated and translated in my paper on the
Atlatl or Spear-thrower of the Ancient Mexicans (Peabody Museum Papers,
vol. 1, no. 3, Cambridge, 1891, p. 22). In this work I presented my
reasons for concluding that these recurved sceptres were ceremonial forms
of the atlatl. I now perceive that they were endowed with deeper
significance and meaning. The Nahuatl text of Sahagun's Laurentian MS. of
the Historia de la Conquista (lib. XII, chap. IV) records the name of one
of these staffs as "hecaxonecuilli," literally "the curved or bent over,
air or wind," and describes it as made of "bent or curved wood, inlaid
with stars formed of white jade=chalchihuite." This passage authorizes the
conclusion that four representations in the B. N. MS. of black recurved
sceptres, exhibiting a series of white dots, are also heca-xonoquitl,
inlaid with stars, and that all of these are none other but conventional
representations of the constellation Xonecuilli, the Ursa Minor. In each
case the deity, carrying the star-image, also displays the ecacozcatl the
"jewel of the wind," the well-known symbol of the wind-god. In one of
these pictures (p. 50) he not only bears in his hand the star-image, but
also exhibits a star-group on his head-dress, consisting of a
central-star, on a dark ground, surrounded by a blue ring. Attached to
this against a dark ground, six other stars are depicted, making seven in
all. In connection with this star-group it is interesting to note that the
hieroglyph, designated by Fra Diego de Landa as "the character