In Mesoamerica we find the toad widely represented in art, often with feline or other nonnaturalistic attributes, including above all jaguar claws and fangs. Particularly striking are the well-known yugos, or yokes, dating from the Preclassic and Early Classic; many of these represent a supernatural toad, and even some that are usually identified with the jaguar might as easily be toads with jaguar characteristics. A recent publication by Ignacio Bernal, with drawings by Andy Seuffert, includes a number of yokes with frontal representations of the monstrous toad in the collections of the Museo Nacional de Antropología (1970: Figs. 7-14). I would suggest these effigy yokes represent the earth mother in her toad form; hence these images can be regarded as early prototypes of Tlaltecuhtli, as she appears on the underside of so many monumental Mexica stone sculptures. In contemporary Mexico, as in Guatemala, toads play a role in myth, sorcery and shamanism, and in curing, a phenomenon which is only sketchily reported and urgently requires scholarly investigation. The symbolic meaning of the toad is much better known from South America. It is here that the toad as earth mother or guardian is still the focus of an important and widespread mythological and ritual complex. It would seem, then, that it is to the southern manifestations of Tlaltecuhtli that we should look for the sorts of ethnographic data that could help explain in her origins and perhaps illuminate to some degree her wider culture historical implications.