NAECOTIC PLANTS AND STIMULANTS — SAFFORD. 407 



more plants with flowers resembling morning-glories. Hernandez 

 (1514-1578) in all probability never saw it growing, and figured it 

 as an Ipomoea, but he indicates its relationship by suggesting that 

 it may be the same as the Solanum maniacum of Dioscorides, and 

 Padre Serna, who likewise never noticed the plant itself, described 

 the seeds as resembling lentils (semilla a modo de lantejas que llaman 

 ololiuhqui). It is interesting to note that Acosta makes the same 

 comparisons in his description of the East Indian Datura metel^ 

 saying that it has flowers like the plant called in Spain correguela 

 mayor (greater convolvulus) and that its fruit is filled with seed of 

 the size of lentils (todo lleno de una simiente del tamailo de lentejas). 

 Great veneration was paid by the Mexicans to the ololiuhqui as well 

 as to tobacco (picietl) and to the narcotic teonanacatl, or peyotl 

 {LopKopKora WilUamsii).^ To these plants according to Padre 

 Serna, the Mexicans ascribed divine powers, with which they prac- 

 ticed magic. 



The methods of the Aztec titzitl, or herb-doctors, in casting out the 

 evil spirits causing sickness, are remarkably like those employed by 

 the priests of ancient Babylon and of the island of Haiti. The 

 spirit of the powerful Ololiuhqui was invoked in the following 

 words : 



Come now, come hither, Green Woman ; behold the green heat [fever] and 

 the brown heat ; remove thou the flaming or scarlet heat, the yellow heat, or 

 by this token I send thee to the seven caves. And, I do command thee, put it 

 not off till tomorrow or another day ; for sooner or later thou wilt be compelled 

 to do it. Who is the god — the so powerful and superior one — who can destroy 

 the work of thy hands? It is I who command it, I the prince of enchantment.' 



THE USE OF DATURA METELOIDES BY THE ZUNIS. 



(Plate 9.) 



It seems strange that the property of giving the power of second 

 sight and prophecy, attributed to the ololiuhqui by the Mexicans, 

 should be similarly attributed by the ancient Peruvians to Datura 

 sanguinea and by the Zuiiis of New Mexico, so far remote from them, 

 to D. meteloides^ with which the ololiuhqui is undoubtedly identical. 

 Mrs. Matilda Coxe Stevenson in her Ethnobotany of the Zuni Indians 

 relates a pretty legend connected with " this precious plant, which is 

 believed to have once been a boy and a girl," resembling a story from 

 Ovid's Metamorphoses. Plate 9 is the photograph of flowers and 

 fruit of a specimen of Datura meteloides^ two-thirds natural size, 

 made at Sacaton, Arizona, by Mr. Harold Murphy. It was secured 

 by the writer through the courtesy of Mr. Thomas H. Kearney, of 



1 For an account of the ceremonial use of the last-named plant see the writer's paper 

 on " An Aztec Narcotic " in Journal of Heredity, 6 : 291-311. 1915. 



' See Jacinto de la Serna, " Manual de Ministros para el conocimiento de idolatrfas y 

 extirpacion de ellas." In Documentos in^ditos para la Historia de Espaiia, vol. 101. 

 pp. 159-160. 



