PER 



PER 



ty, on the supposition that it is receivable 

 yearly. 



PERPETUITY, in law, is where, it' all 

 that have interest join in the conveyance, 

 yet they cannot bar or pass the estate ; 

 for, if by concurrence of all having- inter- 

 est, the estate may be barred, it is no per- 

 petuity. 



PERRY, a drink made of pears, in the 

 same manner as cyder is made from ap- 

 ples. See CYDER. The pears must be 

 perfectly ripe, and to give the liquor a 

 greater degree of tartness, some mix crabs 

 with them. The best fruit for making 

 perry is such as is least fit for eating 1 , as 

 the choak-pear, boreland-pear, horse-pear, 

 and the barberry-pear. 



PERSEUS, in astronomy, a constella- 

 tion of the northern hemisphere, which, 

 according- to the catalogues of Ptolemy 

 and Tycho, contains twenty-nine stars; 

 but in the Britannic catalogue, sixty-seven. 



PERSIAN ivheel t an engine, or wheel, 

 turned by a rivulet, or other stream of 

 water, and fitted with open boxes at its 

 cogs, to raise water for the overflowing of 

 lands, or other purposes. It may be made 

 of any size, according to the height the 

 water is to be raised to, and the strength 

 of the stream by which it is turned This 

 wheel is placed so, that its bottom only is 

 immersed in the stream, wherein the 

 open boxes at its cogs are all filled one 

 after another with water, which is raised 

 with them to the upper part of the wheel's 

 circuit, and then naturally empties itself 

 into a trough, which carries it to the 

 land. 



PERSON, in dramatic poetry, the cha- 

 racter assumed by an actor, or he who is 

 represented by the player. Thus, at the 

 head of dramatic pieces, is placed the dra- 

 matis persons, or list of the persons that 

 are to appear on the stage. Father IJos- 

 su observes, that in the epic and dramatic 

 poem, the same person must reign 

 throughout ; that is, must sustain the 

 chief part through ^he whole piece, and 

 the characters of all the other persons 

 must be subordinate to him. 



PERSON, in grammar, a term applied to 

 such nouns or pronouns, as being either 

 prefixed or understood, are the nomina- 

 tives in all inflexions of a verb ; or it is the 

 agent or patient in all finite and personal 

 verbs. See GRAMMAR. 



PERSONAL tithes, tithes paid of such 

 profits as come by the labour of a man's 

 person, as by buying and selling, gains of 

 merchandise, and handicrafts, Sec. 



PERSONALITY, an action is in the 

 personality, where it is brought against 



the right person, or the person against 

 whom in law it lies. 



PERSONATE, in law, is the represent- 

 ing a person by a fictitious or assumed 

 character, so as to pass for the person re- 

 presented Personating bail, is by stat. 

 21 Jac. 1, c.26, a capital felony. By vari- 

 ous other statutes, personating seamen 

 entitled to wages, prize-money, &c. is also 

 a capital felony. 



PERSONATE, in botany, masked, the 

 name of the fortieth order in Linnzeus's 

 Fragments of a Natural Method, consist- 

 ing of a number of plants whose flowers 

 are furnished with an irregular gaping 

 petal, which, in figure, somewhat resem- 

 bles the snout of an animal. Most of the 

 genera of this natural order arrange them- 

 selves under the class and order " Didy- 

 namia Angiospermia." The rest, al- 

 though they cannot enter into the artificial 

 class just mentioned, for want of the 

 classic character, (the inequality of the 

 stamina), yet, in a natural method, which 

 admits of greater latitude, may be arrang- 

 ed with the Personatae, which they resem- 

 ble in their habit and general appearance, 

 and particularly in the circumstance ex- 

 pressed in the title. This order furnishes 

 both herbaceous and woody vegetables of 

 the shrub and tree kind. The roots are 

 generally fibrous and branched ; in gerar- 

 dia and tozzia, they are tuberous. The 

 roots of broom-rape are parasitical; that 

 is, attach themselves to the roots of other 

 plants, from which they derive their nou- 

 rishment. The stems and branches are 

 cylindrical when young, except in some 

 species of fig-wort, in which they are 

 square. The leaves are simple, generally 

 placed opposite in pairs at the bottom of 

 the branches, but in many genera, stand 

 alternate towards the top. Some species 

 of trumpet-flower have the common foot- 

 stalk of their winged leaves terminated 

 by a tendril, with three or five branches. 

 In a species of cornutia is observed a sti- 

 pula or scale, in form of a half-moon, of 

 the same substance with the leaves be- 

 tween which it is placed. The flowers are 

 universally hermaphrodite. They proceed 

 either singly, or in clusters, from the 

 wings of the leaves, as in American vibur- 

 num, or terminate the branches in a 

 spike, panicle, or head, as in cornutia, ver- 

 vain, &c. I" the hitter they seem placed 

 in whorls. The calyx, or flower-cup, 

 is of one leaf, which is" cut into two, three, 

 four, or five divisions, that are permanent. 

 In the trumpet-flower, the calyx falls oft* 

 early, and generally resolves itself into 

 five "distinct leaves. The corolla is com- 



