BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
Campripce, Massacuuserts, Fesruary 17, 1961 
VoL. 19, No. 7 
THE HALLUCINOGENIC FUNGI 
OF MEXICO: 
AN INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGINS OF THE 
ReExticious LDEA AMONG PRIMITIVE PEoPLEs* 
BY 
R. Gorpon Wasson f 
WHEN I received in Mexico your President’s invitation 
to speak here today, I knew that your Committee had 
made an unorthodox choice, for I am not a professional 
mycologist. As the appointed hour approached my 
trepidation kept mounting, for I saw myself an amateur 
about to be thrown to a pack of professionals. But your 
President’s gracious introductory remarks, however un- 
merited, have put me at my ease and lead me to hope 
that we shall all enjoy together a mushroom foray of a 
rather unusual nature. 
Those of you who do not know the story will be in- 
terested in learning how it came about that my wife, who 
was a pediatrician, and [, who am a banker, took up the 
study of mushrooms. She was a Great Russian and, like 
all of her fellow-countrymen, learned at her mother’s 
knee asolid body of empirical knowledge about the com- 
mon species and a love of them that are astonishing to us 
Americans. Like us, the Russians are fond of nature— 
*The Annual Lecture of the Mycological Society of America, Still- 
water, Oklahoma. August 30, 1960. Revised. 
t Research Fellow, Botanical Museum of Harvard University. 
[ 137 ] 
