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University of California. 



I Vol. 3. 



course. Its profile is that of an open swale, the floor of which is 

 mantled with the wash from the slopes on either side. 



Such a buttress, situated in the bottom of a profound canon 

 and separated from the wall to which it adhered by a parallel 

 pass or col, is a type of geomorphic form which appears as yet 

 to have failed of recognition. It is proposed here to give it the 

 recognition which it seems to merit, and the best way of doing 

 this, perhaps, is to give it a name. It is desired that this name 

 shall be without implication as to the genesis of the form, at 

 least till our notions of that genesis shall have passed the merely 

 hypothetical stage. From the fact of their being buttresses of a 

 peculiar type recognized for the first time in Kern Canon the 

 feature is called a kernbut. The correlative pass, or col, which 

 intervenes between the kernbut and the main canon wall, or 

 between the parallel ridges of a multiple kernbut, is equally in 

 need of a name and is here designated a Jcemcol. 



The buttress which obstructs the canon between the mouth of 

 Coyote Creek and Upper Kern Lake is a good example of a mul- 

 tiple kernbut. See Plate 38b. Extending south from the mouth 

 of Coyote Creek is a sharp ridge about three-quarters of a mile 

 in length, and having an altitude of about 400 feet above the 

 river. The kerncol which separates this from the west wall of 

 the canon is a defile, which rises gradually to the south to an 

 altitude of about 250 feet above the river near to the south end 

 of the ridge, whence it drops again more rapidly to the bottom 

 of the canon on the west side of Upper Lake. A view looking 

 down this kerncol is shown in Plate 39a with the ridge on the 

 right. Overlapping this ridge en echelon, to the east of its 

 southern end, is another similar ridge having an altitude of 

 about 150 feet above the river, and a length of nearly half a 

 mile. The kerncol between these two ridges is a long, narrow 

 flat-bottomed defile but little above the level of the river, and 

 was once temporarily occupied as a channel of the river. The 

 stream has, however, since that occupation cut a gorge obliquely 

 across the northern lower end of this ridge, and the stream 

 passing through the rocky gorge, which has a depth of about 50 

 feet, now flows entirely to the east of the ridge, between it and 

 the east wall of the canon, and then immediately expands into 



