23 JANUARY 1948, Page 5

Supporters of the Outram derivation of " tram " are

rallying round. "The rail haulage paths to the mines," one of them writes, "were called Outram-ways '—shortened to tramways ; hence, by a natural inference, the thing that ran on the tramway was a tram." There is something, perhaps a good deal, to be said for the contention that this is how the modern word " tram" originated, even though a similar word, which could by an effort be twisted into meaning what tram now means, existed in the sixteenth century.