Peruke, or Periuig, 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, perruque. 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 peruke weighed 200 shekels. The word is now used for a set of false hair, curled, buckled, and sewed together on a frame or cawl; an- Perruke, clyently called capillamentum or "false perruke." It is doubted whether or not the use of perrukes 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 fashions; and with the dotards, who hoped to deceive the Deities by their white hair. But these seem to have scarce had anything in common with our perrukes; 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 perruke: it was powdered with scrapings of gold, and oiled (if we may use the expression) with glutinous perfumes for the powder to hang by. In effect, the use of perrukes, at least in their present mode, is not much more than 160 years old; the year 1629 is reckoned the epocha of long perrukes, 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 perruke were some of the French clergy, in the year 1660; nor is the practice yet well authorized. Cardinal Grimaldi in 1684, and the bishop of Lavaur in 1688, prohibited the use of the perruke to all priests without a dispensation or necessity. M. Thiers has an express treatise, to prove the perruke 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 effects a monster in the church; nor can he conceive any thing so scandalous as an abbot with a florid countenance, heightened with a well-curled perruke.

Perry, Captain John, was a famous engineer, who resided 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 Astracan, he was ordered at the end of 1707 to stop, and next year was employed in refitting the ships at Veronife, and 1700 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 stopping 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 stopping of Dagenham Breach, 1721, 8vo; and died February 11, 1733.