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, _kamishimo_ 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 the 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 Yedo, 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[65] 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 Yedo, Miyako, and Nagasaki, exactly like those brought away by Kämpfer, 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 presents exchanged for some years, down at least to the publication of his travels. According to Thunberg, the personages composing the imperial court were in his time so little known that very few people in the whole empire were acquainted with their names. M. Feith, the director whom he accompanied to Yedo, and who had been on the same embassy four times before, and had lived in Japan fourteen years, was obliged to confess at table, after their return to Batavia, being inquired of as to the name of the reigning emperor, that he did not know it, and never had heard it.[66] It was only through the friendship of his medical pupils at Yedo, and of the chief interpreter, that he obtained a knowledge of it, and also a list of the emperors since Kämpfer’s time, which he gives as follows: 1681, TSUNAYOSHI (reigning when Kämpfer left Japan, and for twelve or thirteen years previously). 1709, IYENOBU. 1713, IYETSUGU. 1716, YOSHIMUNE. 1745, IYESHIGE.