are far more frequent than at any other time of the year.  My impression is that this is all nonsense; but I should like to test it with a list of the shocks that have been felt, if such a thing were to be had.  It does not follow that, because the Mexicans have such frequent opportunities of trying the question, they should therefore have done so.  In fact, experience as to popular beliefs in similar matters rather points the other way.  I recollect that in the earthquake districts of southern Italy, when shocks were of almost daily occurrence, people believed that they were more frequent in the middle four hours of the night, from ten to two, than at other times.  Of course, this proved on examination to be quite without foundation.  To take one more case in point.  How many of our almanack-books, even the better class of them, contain prophecies of wet and fine weather, deduced from the moon’s quarters!  How long will it be before we get rid of this queer old astrological superstition?

We made a few rough observations of the thermometer and barometer during our stay in Mexico.  The barometer stands at about 22-1/2 inches, and our thermometer gave the boiling point of water at 199 degrees.  We could never get eggs well boiled in the high lands, and attributed this, whether rightly or not I cannot say, to the low temperature of boiling water.

[Illustration:  GROUP OF ECCLESIASTICS, MEXICO.]

CHAPTER IV.

TACUBAYA.  PACHUCA.  REAL DEL MONTE.

We went one morning to the house of our friend Don Pepe, and were informed by the servant as we entered the courtyard that the nino, the child, was up stairs waiting for us.  “The Child” seemed an odd term to apply to a young man of five and twenty.  The young ladies, in the same way are called the ni-as, and keep the appellation until they marry.

We went off with the nino to his uncle’s house at Tacubaya, on the rising ground above Mexico.  In the garden there we found a vegetation such as one would find in southern Europe—­figs, olives, peaches, roses, and many other European trees and flowers—­growing luxuriantly, but among them the passion-flower, which produces one of the most delicious of fruits, the granadita, and other semi-tropical plants.  The live creatures in the garden, however, were anything but European in their character.  There were numbers of immense butterflies of the most brilliant colours; and the garden was full of hummingbirds, darting backwards and forwards with wonderful swiftness, and dipping their long beaks into the flowers.  They call them chupa-mirtos—­myrtle-suckers, and the Indians take them by blowing water upon them from a cane, and catching them before they have recovered from the shock.  One day we bought a cage full of them, and tried to keep them alive in our room by feeding them with sugar and water, but the poor little things pined away.  In old times the Mexicans