Note 322 — Chapter I

A common food with the lower classes was a glutinous scum found in the lakes, which they made into a sort of cake, having a savor not unlike cheese. (Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 92.)—[This “scum” consists in fact of the eggs of aquatic insects, with which cakes are made, in the same manner as with the spawn of fishes. Conquista de Méjico (trad. de Vega), tom. i. p. 366.{*}]

{*} [Little can be inferred, in regard to the difference of population, from the use of the ahuähutle, as these cakes are called, since it is still a favorite article of food at Tezcuco, where the eggs are found in great abundance, and sold in the market both in the prepared state and in lumps as collected at the edge of the lake. “The flies which produce these eggs are called by the Mexicans axayacatl, or water-face,—Corixa femorata, and Notonecta unifasciata, according to MM. Meneville and Virlet d’Aoust.” Tylor, Anahuac, p. 156.—K.]