Rare vision-giving fungi shown for first time

On his latest expedition to seek out and study the hallucinogenic mushrooms, Wasson was accompanied by Professor Roger Heim, an old friend, one of the world's leading mycologists and head of France's Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle. Wasson had sent Heim specimens from three of his previous trips. Now Heim was able to study the mushrooms in the field, eat them with the Indians and work out techniques for growing some of them in the laboratory. LIFE here publishes Professor Heim's life-size watercolor paintings of the seven kinds of hallucinogenic mushrooms so far discovered. Four of these are species new to science and two others are new varieties of a known species, Psilocybe caerulescens Murrill.
    At the present time no one knows what drug it is in these mushrooms that causes the eater to see visions, and until its properties are clearly defined the hallucinogenic mushrooms must be treated with extreme caution. Among the Indians, their use is hedged about with restrictions of many kinds. Unlike ordinary edible mushrooms, these are never sold in the market place, and no Indian dares to eat them frivolously, for excitement. The Indians themselves speak of their use as muy delicado, that is, perilous.