in the laboratory in which LSD was discovered. During 
the course of chemical studies on ‘‘teonanicatl’’, psilo- 
cybin and psilocin were discovered as active principles of 
the most important hallucinogenic fungi.’ Thus it was 
that the present investigations were crowned with suc- 
cess within an unusually short time, as these two active 
principles are indole compounds that are structurally re- 
lated to LSD and ergot alkaloids. In the chain of events 
that led to the ololiuhqui problem, the most important 
factor was that the writer came into personal contact 
with Wasson as a result of investigations on the active 
principles of ‘‘teonanacatl’’. 
Fired by the discussions with this outstanding expert 
onthe Mexican magic drugs and encouraged by our suc- 
cesses with the hallucinogenic fungi, we decided to tackle 
the chemical investigation of the third most important 
Mexican psychotomimetic after ‘“‘peyotl’’ and ‘‘teonan- 
acatl’’—namely ‘‘ololiuhqui’’. With the help of Wasson, 
we obtained authentic ‘‘ololiuhqui’’, as he sent us two 
samples from his expedition in Mexico in the late sum- 
mer of 1959. With the samples, he wrote from Mexico 
City on August 6, 1959, the following: ‘*. . . Iam send- 
ing you. ..asmall parcel of seeds that I take to be 
Rivea corymbosa, otherwise known as “‘ololiuhqui’’, well 
known narcotic of the Aztecs, called in Huautla ‘“‘la 
semilla de la Virgen’’. This parcel, you will find, consists 
of two little bottles, which represent two deliveries of 
seeds made to us in Huautla, and a larger batch of seeds, 
delivered to us by Francisco Ortega (Chico), the Zapotec 
guide, who himself gathered the seeds from the plants at 
the Zapotec town of San Bartolo Yautepec... > The 
first mentioned light brown, roundish seeds (see Plate 
XXXVI, top left) from Huautla (21 g.), upon botanical 
investigation, were found to be Rivea corymbosa (L.) 
Hall.f., whilst the black and angular seeds (see Plate 
[ 198 | 
