A precise understanding of the meaning of this term is essential,
for it gives a linguistic clue of primary importance in botanical
identification. Molina[26] in 1571 recorded the Nahuatl term peyutl,
whose elastic and imprecise sense designates something white, shining,
silky or woolly, and which applies to the moth-cocoon, a spider-web, a
fine tissue, or, indeed, from its appearance (familiar enough to the
Aztecs) even to the pericardium or covering of the heart. Rémi Siméon,
in his Nahuatl dictionary of 1885, lists “Peyotl or Peyutl—A plant whose
root served to make a drink that took the place of wine (Sahagún);
silkworm cocoon; pericardium, envelope of the heart.”[27]
This etymology, the oldest as well as the most authoritative, is
accepted by Rouhier.[28] The present writer, having been informed of
its linguistic impeccability, further finds it explanatory of otherwise
curious extensions of the term “peyotl” in Hernandez,[29] as well as
later Mexican usages. Various plants in Mexico besides _Lophophora
williamsii_, some of them not even belonging to the Cactus Family, have
been called “peyote.” In each case, however, there has been some part
of the plant to which the meanings of flocculence or cocoon-like woolly
pubescence descriptively can legitimately apply. An appendix is devoted
to the clearing up of this terminological confusion.