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the Niagara limestone to a depth of from twenty to fifty feet. The small 
alluvial deposits at the tips of the present tongues show that lateral 
cutting has not entirely ceased. The hill on Tongue No. 2 may possibly 
be due to a cut-off formed at about the 660-foot level. The possible course 
of the stream at about the 670-foot level need not then have been very 
crooked. Most of its tortuousness has been developed since it struck the 
Niagara limestone. The nomenclature of the subject is somewhat un- 
settled. The land enclosed by a meander is called a neck, point or tongue. 
I propose that the word tongue alone be used to designate that feature; 
that the name neck be reserved for the often narrow portion where the 
tongue joins the mainland, and the name point be used only for the tip 
or extremity of the tongue. In cases where the point is high, as on the 
Osage River, the term headland is natural and descriptive of the whole 
tongue. For those tongues which slope regularly from an elevated main- 
land or neck to a low point I propose the analogous term tailland. 
Taillands are probably not peculiar to the Muscatatuck. I have ob- 
served good specimens on Sand Creek at Brewersville and on Laughery 
Creek at Versailles. The subject is now broached, as far as I am aware, for 
the first time in Indiana and would probably repay further investigation. 
OLD VERNON—A GEOGRAPHICAL BLUNDER. By Cuas. R. DRYER. 
The town of Vernon, the county seat of Jennings County, Indiana, 
was founded in 1816 at the forks of the Muscatatuck River, which was 
the head of flat-boat navigation. It is located upon a high, rocky tongue 
of land, surrounded by the gorge of the river, except at one point, where 
a neck 130 feet high and just wide enough at the top for a roadway con- 
nects it with the mainland. The area enclosed is about one-fourth of a 
square mile, which is bounded, except at a few points, by perpendicular 
bluffs from 40 to 90 feet high. It rises at the center in a double-peaked 
hill 100 feet above the river. As a site for a medieval castle with a 
cluster of cabins around it, designed primarily for defense, it is unrivaled. 
It is a Hoosier Ehrenbreitstein. As a site for a modern commercial town 
it is a failure. In 1850 the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad passed about two 
miles north of. it, and the business center was soon transferred to its 
station, North Vernon. Other railroads have come to North Vernon since, 
18—SCIENCE, 
