Italy’s boys in royal blue
QUESTION Why do Italian international footballers, rugby players and athletes wear blue shirts when the national flag is green, white and red?
ITALIAN international athletes wear blue, the colour of the royal House of Savoy, under which Italy was unified in 1861.
Victor Emmanuel II of the House of Savoy was King of Sardinia before he became King of Italy — the first monarch of a united Italy since the sixth century.
From its inception in 1898 to 1946, the Italian national football team wore Savoy blue with a badge featuring the Savoy Cross. After Italy voted to abolish its monarchy on June 2, 1946, the colours of the Italian flag were included in the badge, and the shirt stayed Savoy blue.
Though national teams generally wear strips based on the colours of their national flags, this is not always the case.
The Dutch wear orange jerseys, the colour of the House of Orange-Nassau; the Germans wear white shirts, from the flag of Prussia; and the Slovenians wear green and white, the traditional colours of the capital city of Ljubljana.
Malcolm Cross, Sunderland.
QUESTION What causes the tussocky mounds of grass in Bushy Park, West London, which appear to be getting bigger?
THESE are the work of yellow meadow ants (Lasius flavus), which thrive in the acid soil of Bushy Park.
Around 15 per cent of the 1,100-acre park is acid grassland. Heavy grazing of heathland creates dry, nutrient-poor soils on which grows fine grasses and wild flowers such as sheep’s sorrel, harebell, tormentil and heath bedstraw.
Bushy Park has been heavily grazed by deer for centuries. Today, there are 320 red deer and fallow deer.
Like all ants, the yellow meadow ant lives in colonies. The workers are yellow/ orange and just 2-4mm long. They spend the majority of their lives underground and are rarely seen unless the nest is disturbed. The nest can extend 3 ft below ground and the ants build a dome to regulate temperature and humidity.
These mounds can house between 8,000 and 14,000 ants. The single queen is 8mm long, dark orange or brown with orange legs. A queen can live for more than 20 years and lay 100 eggs per hour.
Yellow meadow ants feed on insects found in grass, including fly larvae, wireworms, woodlice and springtails. They also ‘farm’ aphids to obtain the sweet honeydew they exude.
Ants work tirelessly over many lifetimes to build a mound that steadily grows. Some colonies may be centuries old.
Richmond Park is also noted for its acid grassland and has 400,000 ant hills, home to as many as three billion ants.
James B. Glover, Guildford, Surrey.
QUESTION Is there any part of the human body that does not have a name?
THE innominate bones, Latin for no name, form the sides of the pelvis consisting of three fused components, the ilium, ischium and pubis.
As a member of St John Ambulance (Association & Brigade) and a former police officer, I remember this from lectures by doctors who gave their unpaid time to teach us anatomy and physiology in first aid classes and for competitions.
Alan Johnson, Chester, Cheshire.
IN 1991, Yale medical student John Phillips realised there were no names to distinguish the toes, bar the big toe: the hallux. He decided Latin medical names were needed and, with reference to the This Little Piggy nursery rhyme, came up with porcellus (little pig) for a toe. Thus there are porcellus fori (went to market), porcellus domi (stayed at home), porcellus carnivorus (had roast beef), porcellus non voratus (didn’t eat or had none) and porcellus plorans domum (cried — or went ‘wee, wee, wee’ — all the way home).
These names failed to catch on in medical circles.
Phil Alexander, Farnborough, Hants.
QUESTION How popular was sparrow pie (‘with the occasional lark’) during World War II?
FuRTHER to the earlier answer, while larks were popular in Britain, they were considered a great delicacy on the Continent from the Middle Ages to the end of the 19th century. The most sought-after variety were
Leipziger Lerchen (Leipzig larks) sold by Lerchenfrauen (lark women) in the German town in Saxony.
It is believed more than 400,000 birds were consumed in October 1720. The slaughter went on until Albert I of Saxony banned the hunting of larks in 1876. They are now a protected species.
Published in Vienna in 1830, the Appetit-Lexicon, subtitled A Book Of Information, Arranged In Alphabetical Order, Listing All Foods And Drinks, From The Ordinary Sort To The Luxurious, tells us: ‘The meat of the lark is tender, nutritious and easily digested. Especially valued are the birds from Leipzig, Halle and Nordlingen, thanks to their good diet on the wheat fields of the surrounding areas.
‘It is really the skylarks we consider a delicacy and among these the ones without a crest taste better. They are eaten roasted or baked in a pie.’
Every good cookery book in the 18th and 19th centuries had lark dish recipes.
The name Leipziger Lerchen lives on in a delicious sweet pastry. Instead of being filled with lark meat, eggs and herbs, the bakers use marzipan with a cherry or cherry jam symbolising the birds’ hearts.
They are topped with two crossed dough strips, mimicking the way the stuffed birds, wrapped in paper, were once sent out in special crates. E. Felix Schoendorfer, Stoke Poges, Bucks.
IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence. Visit mailplus.co.uk to hear the Answers To Correspondents podcast