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 under contract with Galloway Brothers of London, as assistant engineer to Galloway Bey, then manager of public works for Mahomed Ali, viceroy of Egypt. One of the first undertakings on which Perring was engaged was the construction of a tramway from the quarries near Mex to the sea. After the death of Galloway he became a member of the board of public works, was consulted as to the embankment of the Nile, advocated the establishment of stations in the Desert between Cairo and Suez to facilitate the overland transit, and was employed to make a road with the object of carrying out this scheme.

From January to August 1837 he was busy helping Colonel Howard Vyse and others in making a survey of the pyramids at Gizeh, and in the execution of plans, drawings, and maps of these monuments. He had already published ‘On the Engineering of the Ancient Egyptians,’ London, 1835, six numbers. The years 1838 and 1839 he spent in exploring and surveying the pyramids at Abou Roash, and those to the southward, including Fayoom. His services to Egyptian history are described in ‘The Pyramids of Gizeh, from actual survey and admeasurement, by J. E. [sic] Perring, Esq., Civil Engineer. Illustrated by Notes and References to the several Plans, with Sketches taken on the spot by E. J. Andrews, Esq., London, 1839, oblong folio. Part i.: The Great Pyramid, with a map and sixteen plates; part ii.: The Second and Third Pyramids, the smaller to the southward of the Third, and the three to the eastward of the Great Pyramid, with nineteen plates; part iii.: The Pyramids to the southward of Gizeh and at Abou Roash, also Campbell's Tomb and a section of the rock at Gizeh, with map of the Pyramids of Middle Egypt and twenty-one plates.’ Perring's labours are also noticed in Colonel R. W. H. H. Vyse's ‘Operations carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837, with account of a Voyage into Upper Egypt, and an Appendix containing a Survey by J. S. Perring of the Pyramids of Abou Roash,’ 3 vols. 4to, 1840–2 (i. 143 et seq., ii. 1 et seq., iii. 1 et seq.), with a portrait of Perring in an eastern costume. Perring, before leaving Egypt, made a trigonometrical survey of the fifty-three miles of country near the pyramids. The value of these researches, all made at the cost of Colonel Vyse, are fully acknowledged in C. C. J. Bunsen's ‘Egypt's Place in Universal History,’ 5 vols. 1854 (ii. 28–9, 635–45), where it is stated that they resulted in furnishing the names of six Egyptian kings till then unknown to historians.

Perring returned to England in June 1840, and on 1 March 1841 entered upon the duties of engineering superintendent of the Llanelly railway docks and harbour. In April 1844 he became connected with the Manchester, Bury, and Rossendale railway, which he helped to complete; and, after its amalgamation with other lines, was from 1846 till 1859 resident engineer of the East Lancashire railway. He was subsequently connected with the Railway, Steel, and Plant Company, was engineer of the Ribblesdale railway, and constructed the joint lines from Wigan to Blackburn. He was also engineer of the Oswaldtwistle and other waterworks. Finally, he was one of the engineers of the Manchester city railways. On 6 Dec. 1853 he was elected a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and in 1856 a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He died at 104 King Street, Manchester, on 16 Jan. 1869.

[Minutes of Proceedings of Institution of Civil Engineers, 1870, xxx. 455–6; Proceedings of Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 1870, pp. 15–16.] 

PERRONET, VINCENT (1693–1785), vicar of Shoreham and methodist, youngest son of David and Philothea Perronet, was born in London on 11 Dec. 1693. His father, a native of Château d'Oex in the canton of Berne, and a protestant, came over to England about 1680, and was naturalised by act of parliament in 1708, having previously married Philothea Arther or Arthur, a lady of good family, whose paternal grandfather, an officer of the court of Star-chamber, lost a considerable estate near Devizes, Wiltshire, during the civil war. David Perronet died in 1717. One of his elder brothers, Christian, was grandfather of the celebrated French engineer Jean Rodolphe Perronet (1708–1794), director of the ‘ponts et chaussées’ of France, and builder of the bridge of Neuilly, and of the bridge ‘de la Concorde’ (formerly Pont Louis XVI) in Paris; he was a foreign member of the Royal Society, England, and of the Society of Arts, London.

Vincent Perronet, after receiving his earlier education at a school in the north of England, entered Queen's College, Oxford, whence he graduated B.A. on 27 Oct. 1718 (Cat. of Graduates); in later life he was described as M.A. On 4 Dec. 1718 he married Charity, daughter of Thomas and Margaret Goodhew of London, and having taken holy orders, became curate of Sundridge, Kent, where he remained about nine years; in 1728 he was presented to the vicarage of Shoreham in the same county. He was of an extremely religious temperament, believed