The other black & tans

QUESTION

How many coat colours are possible in cocker spaniels? COCKER spaniels have one of the widest colour arrays of any dog breed. Bred as working dogs, their markings were considered important in a practical sense. Some preferred a solid-coloured dog because they felt it was better camouflaged when putting up game.

Others preferred the particoloured dogs for the opposite reason – that the dog could be easily seen by the handler at most times and was unlikely to be injured if the dog failed to stop when the game was flushed and was caught in the line of fire from the gun.

As the idea of holding exhibitions for dogs became fashionable, more attention was paid to the dog’s appearance. A more complete understanding of breeding and genetics helped widen the spectrum of colours. Factors like condition, presentation, colour and markings became more important as the competition spread.

The following 18 colours are designated Cocker Spaniel Breed Standard by the UK and Irish Kennel Clubs: Solid colours – black; red; golden; liver (chocolate); black and tan; liver and tan. No white allowed except a small amount on chest.

Bicolours: Black and white; orange and white; liver and white; lemon and white. All with or without ticking.

Tricolours: Black, white and tan; liver, white and tan.

Roans: Blue roan; orange roan; lemon roan; liver roan; blue roan and tan; liver roan and tan.

Ticking is flecks or spots of colour on white areas. ‘Roan’ is a coat pattern with a mixture of white hairs mingled with coloured hairs i.e. having the base colour (such as red, black or brown) muted and lightened by a mixture of white hairs. There is, of course, a wide variety of variation in shading and colour distribution.

Ali Fraser, Inverness.

QUESTION

How many kilometres per second do emails travel at? THEORETICALLY at the speed of light – 299,000 kilometres per second. But to achieve that speed, the transmitting and receiving device would have to be connected.

An email is analogous to a physical letter, in that once ‘posted’, it goes through a number of processes and distribution channels in order to get to its destination; from post box to mail centre, through several sorting processes, then on to a distribution centre, to a delivery office and finally to the front door.

Similarly, an email goes from the sender’s outbox to the email service provider, where its address information is read and interpreted. It is then sent on to the receiver’s service provider, where it will be transferred to the recipient’s inbox.

However, that’s not a straightline journey. There are myriad servers and queues to be negotiated.

That said, an email travelling from the UK to Australia will arrive approximately 0.2 seconds after the send key is pressed. By comparison, a blink of an eye takes approximately 0.35 seconds.

That makes an effective speed of around 136,794 kilometres per second, or slightly less than half the speed of light. Bob Cubitt, Northampton.

QUESTION

Was the Japanese city of Kyoto the original target of the second nuclear attack on Japan in World War II? JUST two months before the US dropped the first atomic bombs, Nagasaki wasn’t even on a list of target cities. Minutes of a meeting of the Target Committee Los Alamos, May 10-11, 1945, highlighted the principal: ‘AA targets’ as: 1. Kyoto: ‘This target is an urban industrial area with a population of 1,000,000. It is the former capital of Japan and many people and industries are now being moved there as other areas are being destroyed. From the psychological point of view there is the advantage that Kyoto is an intellectual centre for Japan and the people there are more apt to appreciate the significance of such a weapon as the gadget’, and 2. Hiroshima – ‘an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area’.

The other prime targets were Yokohama; ‘an important urban industrial area which has so far been untouched’, and the Kokura Arsenal; ‘one of the largest arsenals in Japan and is surrounded by urban industrial structures. The arsenal is important for light ordnance, anti-aircraft and beach head defence materials . . .’ .

Consideration was also given to Niigata and the Emperor’s palace. In early June 1945, US secretary of war Henry Stimson ordered Kyoto to be removed from the target list. He argued that it was of cultural importance and that it was not a military target.

Because the military brass disagreed, Stimson went straight to the president. His diary entry of July 24, 1945, recorded: ‘He [the president] was particularly emphatic in agreeing with my suggestion that if elimination was not done, the bitterness which would be caused by such a wanton act might make it impossible during the long post-war period to reconcile the Japanese to us in that area rather than to the Russians.’

Stimson had often visited Kyoto in the Twenties when governor of the Philippines and admired Japanese culture.

In another twist of fate, Nagasaki, a late addition to the target list, wasn’t the primary target. This was Kokura, but it was covered by cloud, so the crew headed for the secondary target, Nagasaki. R E Ryman, Berkshire.

QUESTION

I have a camellia called Mary Williams. Who is the Mary Williams that it is named after? TREWIDDEN Gardens is among Cornwall’s finest gardens and is home to one of England’s best collections of magnolias and rhododendrons as well as a collection of more than 300 camellias.

Edward Bolitho bought Trewidden around 1830.

He established the garden by planting woodland cover before filling it with plants introduced from Asia and the Southern Hemisphere.

The garden has remained in the Bolitho family. His granddaughter Mary Williams (1894-1977) lived and worked at Trewidden after the death of her husband in 1955.

She planted the Magnolia hypoleuca on the North Walk, which is now the largest specimen in the UK.

The lovely red Camellia reticulata Mary Williams and Magnolia mollicomata Mary Williams are named after her. Bill Yates, Truro, Cornwall.

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