age area is
891 sq. miles.

3. The UPPER AVON, also called the Warwickshire, and sometimes the
"Shakespeare" Avon from its associations with the poet's town of Stratford
on its banks, is an eastern tributary of the Severn. It rises near Naseby
in Northamptonshire, and, with a course of about 100 m. joins the Severn
immediately below Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire. Its early course is
south-westerly to Rugby, thereafter it runs west and south-west to Warwick,
receiving the Leam on the east. Its general direction thereafter remains
south-westerly, and it flows past Stratford-on-Avon, receives the Stour on
the south and the Arrow on the north and thence past Evesham and Pershore
to Tewkesbury. The valley is always broad, and especially from Warwick
downward, through the Vale of Evesham, the scenery is very beautiful, the
rich valley being flanked by the bold Cotteswold Hills on [v.03 p.0067] the
south and by the wooded slopes of the Arden district of Warwickshire on the
north. The view of Warwick Castle, rising from the wooded banks of the
river, is unsurpassed, and the positions of Stratford and Evesham are
admirable. The river is locked, and carries a small trade up to Evesham, 28
m. from Tewkesbury; the locks from Evesham upward to Stratford (17 m.) are
decayed, but the weirs, and mill-dams still higher, afford many navigable
reaches to pleasure boats. The total fall of the river is about 500 ft.;
from Rugby about 230 ft., and from Warwick 120 ft. The river abounds in
coarse fish.

Among other occurrences of the name of Avon in Great Britain there may be
noted--in England, a stream flowing south-east from Dartmoor in Devonshire
to the English Channel; in South Wales, the stream which has its mouth at
Aberavon in Glamorganshire; in Scotland, tributaries of the Clyde, the Spey
and the Forth.

AVONIAN, in geology, the name proposed by Dr A. Vaughan in 1905 (_Q.J.G.S._
vol. lxi. p. 264) for the rocks of Lower Carboniferous age in the Avon
gorge at Bristol. The Avonian stage appears to embrace precisely the same
rocks and fossil-zones as the earlier designation "Dinantien" (see
CARBONIFEROUS SYSTEM); but its substages, being founded upon different
local conditions and a different interpretation of the zonal fossils, do
not correspond exactly with those of the French and Belgian geologists.

Substages. ZONES. Substages.

{ Kidwellian { _Dibunophyllum_ } }
{