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 PLEBISCITUM exceedingly grievous. The first important step toward their full consideration in the common- wealth was the establishment of the tribune- ship in 494 B. C., a privilege which was still further increased by a law of Volero Publilius in 471 that the election of these magistrates should take place in the oomitia tributa, in which the power of the plebeians was pre- dominant. After the overthrow of the de- cemvirs, another point was gained by the lex Valeria Horatia in 449, which declared that the plebiscita, or decrees of the comitia tributa, should be of equal authority with the decrees of the comitia centuriata, and should become laws if sanctiomed by the senate and confirmed by the cur ice. A change in the constitution was again made in 445, by the law of the tribune Caius Canuleius, which legalized the marriage of the two classes ; but the demand of his colleagues that the consulship should be thrown open to plebeians was so strenuously resisted by the patricians, that a compromise was finally agreed upon, in accordance with which was established the new magistracy of military tribunes with consular power, to which members of both orders were declared eligible. Yet this was but a barren victory, so far as regarded its immediate effects, as the tribunes were usually chosen from the patricians. But the great point was finally gained in 366 by the passing of the Licinian laws, one of which abolished the office of military tribune, and declared that one of the consuls should always be a plebeian. The rogation to that effect was proposed in 376 by 0. Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius, and the reading of it was then stopped by the eight other tribunes, who had been gained over by the other party. Year after year these two men were elected to the tribune- ship in the face of the fiercest opposition of the great patrician houses ; and after ten years of struggle their rogations became laws. After- ward the dictatorship, censorship, prsetorship, and finally by the lex Ogulnia in 300 the priest- hood, were thrown open to plebeians. The lex Valeria was extended by the law of the plebeian dictator, Q. Publilius Philo, passed in 339, providing that the plebiscita should not require the confirmation of the curicB in order to have the force of laws; and it was still further extended by the lex Hortensia in 286, declaring that they should not need the sanc- tion of the senate. Henceforth the distinction between the two orders gradually disappeared. PLEBISCITES! (Lat., decree of the plebs ; Fr. plebiscite), the designation in the early days of the Roman republic of laws enacted by the plebeians without the intervention of the pa- tricians and the senate. The first plebiscitum in modern times occurred in France in 1793, upon the proposed constitution, the masses of the people being called upon to give simply .affirmative or negative votes. The most mem- orable later ones are the popular votes taken on the consulate for life in 1802, and the first and second empires in 1804 and 1852. PLESIOSAURUS 609 PLEIADES, a group of stars situated on the shoulder of the constellation Taurus. It was regarded by Madler as the central group of the system of the milky way. Alcyone, the bright- est of the Pleiades, a star of the third magnitude, was considered to occupy the apparent position of the central point round which our universe of fixed stars is revolving. This theory, how- ever, had no other basis than the general com- munity of direction observed among the prop- er motions of the stars in Taurus ; and as it is now known that in other regions of the heav- ens a similar phenomenon can be recognized, it is impossible to accept Madler's theory. Apart from this, it has been pointed out by Sir John Herschel that the Pleiades are too far from the milky way to be a probable centre of motion for the stars of our galaxy. PLEIOCENE. See PLIOCENE. PLEODONT. See LIZAED. PLESIOSAFRUS, an extinct gigantic enaliosau- rian or marine reptile, found principally in the lias (secondary) formation of England, in com- pany with the still larger ichthyosaurus. The head was small, supported on a long, flexible, snake-like neck, the body and tail short, with four limbs in the shape of powerful swimming paddles, like those of turtles or cetaceans ; the skin was probably naked. This singular genus, named by Conybeare, to a lizard's head united the teeth of a crocodile, a neck like a serpent's body, the trunk and tail of a quadruped, the vertebrae of a fish, the ribs of a chameleon, and the fins of a whale. The apertures through which the air was respired are just in front of the orbits on the highest part of the head, and not at the end of the snout as in croco- diles ; the paddles were probably invested with Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus (restored). a sheath of integument, and from the natural curvature of the bones must have had a more elegant and tapering form and greater flexibil- ity than in cetaceans. Nearly 20 species are de- scribed, of which the best known is the P. do-