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Rh Perm presents a mixture of Siberian and Russian species, several of which have their north-eastern or south-western limits within the government The climate is severe, the average temperature at different places being as follows:—

The estimated population in 1906 was 3,487,100, and consists chiefly of Great Russians. besides Bashkirs (including Meshcheryaks and Teptyars), Permyaks or Permians, Tatars, Cheremisses, Syryenians, Votyaks and Voguls. Agriculture is the general occupation, rye, oats, barley and hemp are raised in all parts, and wheat, millet, buckwheat, potatoes and flax in the south. Cattle-breeding is specially developed in the south-east among the Bashkirs, who have large numbers of horses. Mining is developing steadily though slowly. The ironworks employ nearly 200,000 hands (12,000 being in the Imperial ironworks), and their aggregate output reaches an estimated value of £6,000,000 annually. The annual production of gold is valued at nearly half a million sterling, and of platinum at approximately a quarter of a million, the output of platinum being equal to 95% of the World's total output. Coal and coke to the extent of 300,000 to 500,000 tons, salt to 300,000 tons, asbestos and other minerals are also obtained. The first place among the manufacturing industries is taken by flour-mills. The cutting of precious stones is extensively carried on throughout the villages on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains, the chief market for them being at Ekaterinburg. An active trade, greatly favoured by the easy communication of the chief centres of the mining industry with the market of Nizhniy Novgorod on the one side and with the network of Siberian rivers on the other, is carried on in metals and metal wares, minerals, timber and wooden wares, tallow, skins, cattle, furs, corn and linseed. Large caravans descend the allluents of the Kama every spring, and reach the fairs of Laishev and Nizhniy Novgorod, or descend the Volga to Samara and Astrakhan; while Ekaterinburg is an important centre for the trade with Siberia. The fairs at Irbit, second in importance only to that of Nizhniy Novgorod, and Ivanov (in the district of Shadrinsk) are centres for supplying Siberia with groceries and manufactured wares, as also for the purchase of tea, of furs for Russia, and of corn and cattle for the mining districts. The chief commercial centres are Ekaterinburg, Irbit, Perm, Kamyshlov, Sliadrinsk and Cherdyn.

Perm is more largely provided with educational institutions and primary schools than most of the governments of central Russia. Besides the ecclesiastical seminary at Perm there is a mining school at Ekaterinburg. The Perm zemstvo or provincial council is one of the most active in Russia in promoting the spread of education and agricultural knowledge among the peasants The government is intersected by a railway from Perm eastwards across the Urals, and thence southwards along their eastern slope to Ekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk (main Siberian trunk line) and Tyumen, also by a railway from Perm to Kotlas, at the head of the Northern Dvina.

History.—Remains of palaeolithic man, everywhere very scarce in Russia, have not yet been discovered in the upper basins of the Kama and Ob, with the exception, perhaps, of a single human skull found in a cavern on the Chanva (basin of Kama), together with a skull of Ursus spelaeus. Neolithic remains are met with in immense quantities on both Ural slopes. Still larger quantities of implements belonging to an early Finnish, or rather Ugrian, civilization are found everywhere in the basin of the Kama Herodotus speaks of the richness of this country inhabited by the Ugrians, who kept up a brisk traffic with the Greek colony of Olbia near the mouth of the Dnieper, and with the Bosporus by way of the Sea of Azov and the Volga. The precise period at which the Ugrians left the district for the southern steppes of Russia (the Lebedia of Constantine Porphyrogenitus) is not known. In the 9th century, if not earlier, the Norsemen were acquainted with the country as Bjarmeland, and Byzantine annalists knew it as Permia Nestor describes it as a territory of the Perm or Permians, a Finnish people.

The Russians penetrated into this region at an early date. In the 11th century Novgorod levied tribute from the Finnish inhabitants, and undertook the colonization of the country, which in the treaties of the 13th century is dealt with as a separate territory of Novgorod. In 1471 the Novgorod colonies in Perm were annexed to Moscow, which in the following year erected a fort to protect the Russian settlers and tradesmen against the Voguls, Ostiaks and Samoyedes. The mineral wealth of the country attracted the attention of the Moscow princes, and in the end of the 15th century Ivan III. sent two Germans to search for ores, these they succeeded in Ending south of the upper Pechora. The Stroganovs in the 16th century founded the first salt- and ironworks, built forts, and colonized the Ural region. The rapidly-growing trade with Siberia gave a new impulse to the development of the country. This trade had its centres at Perm and Solikamsk, and later at Irbit.

PERM, a town of Russia, capital of the government of the same name, stands on the left bank of the Kama, on the great highway to Siberia, 1130 m. by rail and river N.E. from Moscow. Pop. (1879), 32,350; (1897), 45,403. During summer it has regular steam communication with Kazan, 605 m. distant, and it is connected by rail (311 m.) with Ekaterinburg on the east side of the Urals. The town is mostly built of wood, with broad streets and wide squares, and has a somewhat poor aspect, especially when compared with Ekaterinburg. It is the seat of a bishop of the Orthodox Greek Church, and has an ecclesiastical seminary and a military school, besides several scientific institutions (the Ural society of natural sciences, archives committee, technical society), and a scientific museum. Its industries develop but slowly, the chief works being ship-building yards, tanneries, chemical works, saw-mills, brickfields, copper foundries, machinery works, soap and candle factories and rope works. The government has a manufactory of steel guns and munitions of war in the immediate neighbourhood of the town. The present site of Perm was occupied, as early as 1568, by a settlement named Brukhanovo, founded by one of the Stroganovs; this settlement seems to have received the name of Perm in the 17th century. A copper works was founded in the immediate neighbourhood in 1723, and in 1781 it received officially the name of Perm, and became an administrative centre both for the country and for the mining region.

PERMEABILITY, MAGNETIC, the ratio of the magnetic induction or flux-density in any medium to the inducing magnetic force. In the C.G S. electromagnetic system of units the permeability is regarded as a pure number, and its value in empty space is taken as unity. The permeability of a metal belonging to the ferromagnetic class—iron, nickel, cobalt and some of their alloys—is a function of the magnetic force, and also depends upon the previous magnetic history of the specimen. As the force increases from zero the permeability of a given specimen rises to a maximum, which may amount to several thousands, and then gradually falls off, tending to become unity when the force is increased without limit. Every other substance has a constant permeability, which differs from unity only by a very small fraction; if the substance is paramagnetic, its permeability is a little greater than 1, if diamagnetic, a little less. The conception of permeability (Lat. per, through, and meare, to wander), is due to Faraday, who spoke of it as “conducting power for magnetism” (Experimental Researches, xxvi), and the term now in use was introduced by W. Thomson (Lord Kelvin), in 1872, having been suggested by a hydrokinetic analogy (Reprint of Papers on Electrostatics and Magnetism, xxxi., xlii) It is generally of importance that the iron employed in the construction of electrical machinery should possess high permeability under the magnetic force to which it is to be subjected. (See and .)