PERUKE, or Pericwig, was anciently a name for a long head of natural hair; such, particularly, as there was care taken in the adjusting and trimming of. Menage derives the word rather fancifully from the Latin pilus "hair." It is derived, according to this critic, thus, pilus, pelus, pelatus, peluticus, pelutica, perutica, peruca, perrique. The Latins called it coma: whence part of Gaul took the denomination of Gallia Comata, from the long hair which the inhabitants wore as a sign of freedom. An ancient author says, that Absalom's periuke weighed 200 shekels.

The word is now used for a set of false hair, curled, buckled, and sewed together on a frame or cowl; an ciently called *capillamentum* or "false periuke." It is doubted whether or not the use of periukes of this kind was known among the ancients. It is true, they used false hair; Martial and Juvenal make merry with the women of their time, for making themselves look young with their borrowed hair; with the men who changed their colours according to the seasons; and with the dotards, who hoped to deceive the Delphines by their white hair. But these seem to have scarce had anything in common with our periukes; and were at best only composed of hair painted, and glued together. Nothing can be more ridiculous than the description Lampridius gives of the emperor Commodus's periuke: it was powdered with scents of gold, and oiled (if we may use the expression) with glutinous perfumes for the powder to hang by. In effect, the use of periukes, at least in their present mode, is not much more than 160 years old; the year 1629 is reckoned the epocha of long periukes, at which time they began to appear in Paris; from whence they spread by degrees through the rest of Europe. At first it was reputed a scandal for young people to wear them, because the loss of their hair at that age was attributed to a disease the very name whereof is a reproach; but at length the mode prevailed over the scruple, and persons of all ages and conditions have worn them, foregoing without any necessity the conveniences of their natural hair. It was, however, some time before the ecclesiastics came into the fashion: the first who assumed the periuke were some of the French clergy, in the year 1663; nor is the practice yet well authorized. Cardinal Grimaldi in 1684, and the bishop of Lavau in 1688, prohibited the use of the periuke to all priests without a dispensation or necessity. M. Thiers has an express treatise, to prove the periuke indecent in an ecclesiastic, and directly contrary to the decrees and canons of councils. A priest's head, embellished with artificial hair curiously adjusted, he esteems a monster in the church; nor can he conceive anything so scandalous as an abbot with a florid countenance, heightened with a well-curled periuke.

**Perry**, Captain John, was a famous engineer, who refused long in Russia, having been recommended to the czar Peter while in England, as a person capable of serving him on a variety of occasions relating to his new design of establishing a fleet, making his rivers navigable, &c. His salary in this service was 300l. per annum, besides travelling expenses and subsistence money on whatever service he should be employed, together with a further reward to his satisfaction at the conclusion of any work he should finish. After some conversation with the czar himself, particularly respecting a communication between the rivers Volga and Don, he was employed on that work for three summers successively; but not being well supplied with men, partly on account of the ill success of the czar's arms against the Swedes at the battle of Narva, and partly by the discouragement of the governor of Astrakhan, he was ordered at the end of 1707 to stop, and next year was employed in refitting the ships at Veronice, and 1709 in making the river of that name navigable; but after repeated disappointments, and a variety of fruitless applications for his salary, he at last quitted the kingdom, under the protection of Mr Whitworth, the English ambassador, in 1712: (See his narrative in the Preface to *The State of Russia*). In 1721 he was employed in flopping with success the breach at Dagenham, in which several other undertakers had failed; and the same year about the harbour at Dublin, to the objections against which he then published an Answer. He was author of *The State of Russia*, 1716, 8vo, and *An Account of the Flopping of Dagenham Breach*, 1721, 8vo; and died Feb. 11, 1733.

**Perry**, the name of a very pleasant and wholesome liquor extracted from pears, in the same manner as cider is from apples. See Cyder and Agriculture Index.

The best pears for perry, or at least the sorts which have been hitherto deemed the fittest for making this liquor, are of a tart and harsh quality. Of these the Bofbury pear, the Bareland pear, and the horse pear, are the most esteemed for perry in Worcestershire, and the squash pear, as it is called, in Gloucestershire; in both which counties, as well as in some of the adjacent parts, they are planted in the hedge-rows and most common fields. There is this advantage attending pear-trees, that they will thrive on land where apples will not so much as live, and that some of them grow to such a size, that a single pear-tree, particularly of the Bofbury and the squash kind, has frequently been known to yield, in one season, from one to four hogsheads of perry. The Bofbury pear is thought to yield the most lasting and most vinous liquor. The John pear, the Harpary pear, the Drake pear, the Mary pear, the Lullum pear, and several others of the harshest kinds, are esteemed the best for perry, but the redder or more tawny they are, the more they are preferred. Pears, as well as apples, should be full ripe before they are ground.

Dr Beale, in his general advertisements concerning cyder, subjoined to Mr Evelyn's *Pomona*, disapproves of Palladius's saying, that perry will keep during the winter, but that it turns sour as soon as the weather begins to be warm; and gives, as his reasons for being of a contrary opinion, that he had himself tasted at the end of summer, a very brisk, lively, and vinous liquor, made of horse pears; that he had often tried the juice of the Bofbury pear, and found it both pleasanter and richer the second year, and still more so the third, though kept only in common hogsheads, and in but indifferent cellars, without being bottled; and that a very honest, worthy, and ingenious gentleman in his neighbourhood, assured him, as of his own experience, that it will keep a great while, and grow much the stronger for keeping, if put into a good cellar and managed with due care. He imputes Palladius's error to his possibly speaking of common eatable pears, and to the perry's having been made in a very hot country; but he would have ascribed it to a more real cause, perhaps, had he pointed out the want of a thorough regular fermentation, to which it appears plainly that the ancients were entire strangers; for all their vinous liquors were medicated by boiling before they were laid up in order to be kept.