PREFATORY MEMOIR. XIX 



High School of Edinburgh, the boy's education was supple- 

 mented in very important respects by Tom Yule, a footman 

 who had come to Eossdhu from Mellerstain, then one of the 

 foremost sporting establishments in Scotland. "An expert 

 swimmer, a noted race-runner, understood all the arcana of 

 trapping vermin, was an excellent judge of a terrier," Tom, 

 with all these accomplishments, found an impressionable sub- 

 ject for his instructions in his young master. With the excep- 

 tion of Professor Wilson, whose lectures at Edinburgh Univer- 

 sity he afterwards attended and admired, Tom seems to have 

 been the only one of his teachers whose memory John Col- 

 quhoun greatly valued. 



After leaving college, Colquhoun joined the 33d, Duke of 

 Wellington's Eegiment, and was employed in still-hunting in 

 the wilds of Connaught. The duty was uncongenial if occa- 

 sionally exciting ; but the opportunities of sport were un- 

 equalled. The fox-hunting in the plains of Boyle, where, 

 after the manner of the Irish, the foxes are hares, was a 

 new experience. " The leaps were chiefly over stone walls, 

 and many of the horses tipped them in the most dexterous 

 manner. So deftly did they touch the top of the wall, that 

 after a horse and his rider had cleared, I have seen a tottering 

 stone rattle down directly afterwards. Yet from this cause I 

 never saw an accident. In fact, the ' tippers ' were the safest 

 horses on the ' plains of Boyle.' ' : One of Mr Colquhoun's 

 mounts was " a famous black horse, well named { Pepper,' one 

 of the best wall - clearers and soundest horses of county 

 Connaught. His price was 70 a long figure for an Irish 

 horse of those days." 



In August 1829 Mr Colquhoun exchanged from the 33d 

 into the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards, then stationed at 

 York. While with this regiment, he hunted in the Beverley 

 country on a horse called " Brown Stout," and received an 

 amount of kindness and hospitality there which he never 

 forgot. He only spent a few years in the 4th Dragoon 



