PERTZ, ports, GEORG HEINRICH (1795.1876), A German historian. He was born at Hanover, studied at Gottingen, and at twenty-four pub lished an authoritative Gesehiehte der itrrorin gisehen Ilausmeier (1819). Four years after wards Pertz was appointed secretary of the royal archives of Hanover and began his impor tant research in medkeval German history as editor of the Monumenta German-kg Historica. The materials for the Carolingian period were edited personally by Pertz, and an account of his travels and preliminary research was published in the A rehir der Gesellschaft fiir hilere deutsche Gcschichtskundc (1824 et seq.). He re signed his post as editor in 1874. Pertz had be come librarian and keeper of the Hanoverian archives in 1827, librarian in Berlin in 1842, and had written biographies of Stein (1849-54), and of Count von Gncisenau (1804-69). With Grote fend Ile edited Leibnil z's works (1843-47).
PERU' (corrupted from Biru, name of a chief of the early sixteenth century, who ruled a small territory of South America near the Isthmus of Darien). One of the four countries of South
America bordering on the Pacific Ocean. It is bounded on the north by Ecuador, on the east by Brazil and Bolivia, on the south by Bolivia and Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. Its frontiers on the north, east, and south cannot be exactly defined throughout their whole extent, on account of boundary disputes with Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile still pending (1903). The coast line, however, is not affected by these disputes except for a comparatively short dis tance in the extreme south. In 1880 Peru claimed an area of 504,000 square miles, but its claims, according to the Lima Geographical So eiety, now embrace nearly 700,000 square miles. According to the last census taken (1876) the area was 463,747 square miles. Probably a near approximation to the area is 440,000 square miles actually under the present control of Peru. The length of the coast line conceded to belong to Peru is about 1100 miles, not reckoning sinuosi ties.