The doggies with fab fur

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 for practical reasons. Some preferred a solid-coloured dog because they felt it was better camouflaged when hunting game.

others preferred dogs with a multicoloured coat because they could be seen easily by the handler and were unlikely to be injured if they failed to stop when the game was flushed out of cover, and were caught in the line of fire.

As dog shows became fashionable, more attention was paid to the animal’s appearance. Factors such as condition, presentation, colour and markings became more important as the competition spread. A more complete understanding of breeding and genetics helped widen the spectrum of colours.

Among the colours designated as cocker spaniel breed standard by the kennel Club are six solid colours of black; red; golden; liver (chocolate); black and tan; and liver and tan. No white allowed except a small amount on chest.

There are four bicolours of black and white; orange and white; liver and white; and lemon and white. All with or without ticking — flecks or spots of colour on white areas, plus two tricolours of black, white and tan; and liver, white and tan.

roan is a coat pattern with a mixture of white hairs mingled with coloured hairs — the base colour (such as red, black or brown) is muted and lightened by a mixture of white hairs. There are six roans: blue; orange; lemon; liver; blue roan and tan; and liver roan and tan.

There is, of course, a wide variation in shading and colour distribution.

Ali Fraser, Inverness.

QUESTION How many miles per second do emails travel at?

TheoreTiCAlly, emails travel at the speed of light — 186,000 miles per second. But to achieve that speed, the transmitting and receiving devices would have to be physically wired to one another.

An email is analogous to a physical Colourful: Cocker spaniel puppies letter, in that once posted, it goes through a number of processes and distribution channels in order to get to its destination.

A letter is put in a post box and from there it goes to a mail centre, through several sorting processes, then on to a distribution centre and a delivery office before finally being delivered through your letterbox.

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 straight line journey. There are myriad servers and queues to be negotiated.

That said, an email without attachments travelling from Britain to Australia will arrive approximately 0.2 seconds after the send key is pressed. in comparison, a blink of an eye takes 0.35 seconds.

That makes an effective speed of around 85,000 miles 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?

JuST two months before the u. S. dropped the first atomic bombs, Nagasaki wasn’t on a list of target cities.

Minutes of a meeting of the Target Committee los Alamos, May 10-11, 1945, highlighted the two principal targets.

kyoto was number one. ‘This target is an urban industrial area with a population of one million. it is the former capital of Japan and many people and industries are 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 and the people there are more apt to appreciate the significance of such a weapon.’

The second principal target was hiroshima — ‘an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area’.

other targets were yokohama, ‘ an important urban industrial area, which has so far been untouched’, and kokura, ‘one of the largest arsenals in Japan, surrounded by urban industrial structures. The arsenal is important for light ordnance, anti-aircraft and beach head defence materials’. Consideration was also given to the city of Niigata and the emperor’s palace in Tokyo.

in early June 1945, u.S. Secretary of War henry Stimson ordered kyoto to be removed from the target list. he argued it was of cultural importance and 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, Pangbourne, Berks.

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