Japan and the Japanese

WORKS ON NATURAL HISTORY. 419
dies. Men of a highe rank wear over the long gowns a shorter
one, made of some thin stuff, such as gauze. As to the neck and
sleeves of it, they are like those of the other, but it reaches only to
the waist, and is not fastened with a girdle, but tied before and at
the top with a
string. This is half-gown sometimes of a yellow, but
most frequently of a black color, and is laid aside at home, or in
any place where no superior is present."
As the Japanese ordinarily wear no covering for the legs, feet or
head, the above described gowns constitute their entire dress, except
upon occasions of ceremony, when a complimentary dress, or honor-
gown, kamisamo, as they call it, is added to it. This complimentary
dress consists of a frock, generally of a blue stuff, with white
flowers about half the length of the gown, and made much in the
same way, but carried on each side back over the shoulders, so as
to give a very broad-shouldered appearance to the wearer. To
this, with persons of a certain rank, is added, as part of the dress-
of ceremony, a garment half breeches, half petticoat, as if it were a
petticoat sewed up between (he legs, but left open at the sides for
two thirds their
length, fastened about the waist by a band, and
reaching to the ankles.
Before leaving Jedo, Thunberg purchased a number of botanical
books, containing very indifferent figures of plants, as did another
botanical work, in twenty thin octavo volumes, presented to him by
one of his medical pupils. But a large printed* quarto, which he
purchased, contained figures of Japanese fishes, engraved and colored
in such superior style, as to be able to compete with similar
European works. He also procured, though the selling such things
to strangers was strictly prohibited, a map of Japan, with plans of
Jedo, Miako and Nagasaki, exactly like those brought away by
Kiimpfer, and engraved in his work. Just before his departure, at
the request of his two pupils in medicine, he gave them a certificate
in Dutch, of their proficiency, with which they were as highly delighted
as ever a young doctor was with his diploma. A warm
friendship had sprang up between him and them, and, even after
Thunberg's return to Europe, a correspondence was kept up and
* The Japanese print entirely froa stereotype plates. They do not em
ploy movable types, and they print on one side of the paper only.