Originally, he says, the term was used solely with reference
to the employment of horses (averia) and carts. Later it
meant a charge for carriage. The modern sense, of " an
amount estimated as a mean proportion of a number of
different amounts, has been easily developed out of an
older and original meaning, viz., a proportionate contri-
bution rendered by the tenant to the lord of the manor for
the service of carrying wheat, turf, &c." It is not easy to
understand the filiation of the two meanings, even as so
explained. But, in fact, there was no reference to pro-
portion in the average of the tenant, which was simply the
duty of performing so many days' gratuitous labour for the
lord. Moreover, the modern sense of a mean value did
not arise until centuries after the sense of duty-labour had
become obsolete.
Nor is the attempt to account for the sense of marine



12 AVERAGE.
average from the same source at all more satisfactory.
