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Pliny (YOUNGER Caius Plinius C cilius)

THE YOUNGER (Caius Plinius Cæcilius Secundis), nephew of the preceding; born in Como A. D. 62.

He studied under Quintilian, and in his 18th year began to plead in the forum.

Soon after this he went as military tribune to Syria. He settled at Rome; was promoted to the consular dignity by by Trajan, in praise of whom he pronounced a famous oration, which is extant. He PLINY THE YOUNGER was afterward made proconsul of Bithynia, from whence he wrote to Trajan his curious and well-known account of the Christians, and their manner of worship. The "Epistles of Pliny" are agreeably written, and very instructive; they were translated into English by Lord Orrey and Mr. Melmoth. He died after 112.

PLIOCENE or PLEIOCENE, the epithet applied by Sir Charles Lyell to the most modern of the three periods into which he divided the Tertiary. Its distinguished character is that the larger part of the fossil shells are of recent species. Lyell divides it into the Older and the Newer Pliocene. In the Older, the extinct species of shells form a large PLOVER majority of the whole; in the Newer, the shells are almost all of living species.

There is a rich Pliocene flora in Italy.

Mr. Gaudin and the Marquis Strozzi enumerate pine, oak, evergreen oak, plum, plane, elder, fig, laurel, maple, walnut, birch, buckthorn, etc. In the British Pliocene or Crag, Etheridge enumerates 328 genera, and 1,103 species of animals; 30 genera, and 57 species are mammalia.

Both Vesuvius and Etna were in operation. The climate, at first temperate was becoming severe, and the Newer Pliocene was contemporaneous with part of the GLACIAL PERIOD (q. v.).