PERUKE, or Perwig, was anciently a name for a long head of natural hair, particularly such as great care had been taken in adjusting and trimming. Ménage derives the word rather fancifully from the Roman word pilus, hair. The Latins called it coasa, and hence 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 perruke weighed two hundred shekels. The word is now used for a set of false hair, curled, buckled, and sewed together upon a frame or cawl, anciently called capillamentum, or false perruke. It is doubted whether or not the use of perruks of this kind was known amongst the ancients. It is certain, however, that they used false hair. Martial and Juvenal ridicule the women of their time, for making themselves look young by means of borrowed hair; they scoff at the men who changed their colours according to the seasons, and the dotards, who hoped to deceive the destinies by their white hair. But these oddities do not seem to have had any thing in common with our perruks, and were at best only composed of hair painted and glued together. Nothing can be more ridiculous than the description which 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, to make the powder adhere. The year 1629 is reckoned the epoch of long perruks; at this time they began to appear in Paris, whence they spread by degrees throughout the rest of Europe.

Perry, Captain John, a respectable engineer, who resided long in Russia, having been recommended to the Czar Peter whilst in England, as a person capable of serving him on a variety of occasions relating to his new design of establishing a fleet and improving inland navigation. His salary in this service was £300 per annum, besides travelling expenses and subsistence money on what- ever service he might 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 discontinue his operations, and next year was employed in refitting the ships at Veronise, and 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. In 1721 he was employed in stopping with success the breach at Dagenham, in which several other undertakings had failed; and the same year he was occupied about the harbour at Dublin, to the objections against which he then published an Answer. He was the author of a work on the State of Russia, 1716, 8vo, and an account of the stopping of Dagenham breach, 1721, 8vo; and he died on the 11th of February 1733. These scanty particulars are all that is known of Captain Perry, who seems to have been a man of considerable ability and enterprise.