alchihuitl_, a species of jade or precious green stone, very highly
esteemed by the natives of Mexico and Central America, and worked by them
into ornaments and talismans, often elaborately engraved and inscribed
with symbols, by an art now altogether lost.[2] According to one myth,
Quetzalcoatl's mother took the name of _chalchiuitl_ "when she ascended to
heaven;"[3] by another he was engendered by such a sacred stone;[4] and by
all he was designated as the discoverer of the art of cutting and
polishing them, and the patron deity of workers in this branch.[5]

[Footnote 1: From _chalchihuitl_, jade, and _cueitl_, skirt or petticoat,
with the possessive prefix, _i_, her.]

[Footnote 2: See E.G. Squier, _Observations on a Collection of
Chalchihuitls from Central America_, New York, 1869, and Heinrich Fischer,
_Nephrit und Jadeit nach ihrer Urgeschichtlichen und Ethnographischen
Bedeutung_, Stuttgart, 1880, for a full discussion of the subject.]

[Footnote 3: _Codex Telleriano-Remensis_, Pt. ii, Lam. ii.]

[Footnote 4: See above, chapter iii, Sec.3]

[Footnote 5: Torquemada, _Monarquia Indiana_, Lib. vi, cap. xxiv.]

The association of this stone and its color, a bluish green of various
shades, with the God of Light and the Air, may have reference to the blue
sky where he has his home, or to the blue and green waters where he makes
his bed. Whatever the connection was, it was so close that the festivals
of all three, Tlaloc, Chalchihuitlicue and Quetzalcoatl, were celebrated
together on the same day, which was the first of the first month of the
Aztec calendar, in February.[1]

[Footnote 1: Sahagun, _Hisioria_, Lib. ii, cap. i. A worthy but visionary
Mexican antiquary, Don J.M. Melgar, has recognized in Aztec mythology the
frequency of the symbolism which expresses the fertilizing action of the
sky (the sun and rains) upon the earth. He thinks that in some of the
manuscripts, as the _Codex Borgia_, it is represented by the rabbit
fecundating the frog. See his _Examen Comparativo entre los Signos
Simbolicos de las Teogonias y Cosmogonias antiguas y los que existen en
los Manuscritos Mexicanos_, p. 21 (Vera Cruz, 1872).]

In his character as god of days, the deity who brings back the diurnal
suns, and thus the seasons and years, Quetzalcoatl was the reputed
inventor of the Mexican Calendar. He himself was said to have been born on
Ce Acatl, One Cane, which was the first day of the first month, the
beginning of the re