But in the Nahuatl language, the word _acatl_, reed, cornstalk, is also applied to the virile member; and it has been suggested that this is the real signification of the word when applied to the hero-god.

The suggestion is plausible, but the word does not seem to have been so construed by the early writers.

If such an understanding had been current, it could scarcely have escaped the inquiries of such a close student and thorough master of the Nahuatl tongue as Father Sahagun.
On the other hand, it must be said, in corroboration of this identification, that the same idea appears to be conveyed by the symbol of the serpent.

One correct translation of the name Quetzalcoatl is "the beautiful serpent;" his temple in the city of Mexico, according to Torquemada, had a door in the form of a serpent's mouth; and in the _Codex Vaticanus_, No.

3738, published by Lord Kingsborough, of which we have an explanation by competent native authority, he is represented as a serpent; while in the same Codex, in the astrological signs which were supposed to control the different parts of the human body, the serpent is pictured as the sign of the male member.[1] This indicates the probability that in his function as god of reproduction Quetzalcoatl may have stood in some relation to phallic rites.
[Footnote 1: Compare the _Codex Vaticanus_, No.