THE YORK AND AINSTY. 139 



place at Xewmarket at the latter end of the last century, the 

 owner of Mcrkin and Lounger, with -whom he challenged all 

 England, as well as the celebrated pointer Dash — half a fox-hound, 

 by the way — which he sold to Sir Eichard Symons for one 

 hundred and sixty pounds' worth of Champagne and Burgundy, 

 a hogshead of claret, an elegant gun and a pointer, and stipu- 

 lated for his return at the end of his sporting career at fifty 

 guineas — an event which soon occurred, as he broke his leg 

 shortly afterwards. The matches of the so-called Mrs. Thornton 

 with Mr. Flint and Buckle, the jockey, will also be in the re- 

 collection of my sporting readers, who, however, may not all know 

 that she shared the honour of the colonel's favour with a rival, 

 and that the eccentric old gentleman, who had so far anticipated 

 Mormon institutions, called them Dash wood and Dormer, accord- 

 ing to their different temperaments, and that it was Dash wood, as 

 might be anticipated, who rode in public as Mrs. Thornton. He 

 lived for a time at a little farm close to Winsford Hill in Devon- 

 shire, called Ashway Ham, well known to all stag-hunters, 

 where he kept a pack of harriers, and one who remembered both 

 the colonel and the ladies gave me the particulars. He de- 

 scribed him as a little, shrivelled-up, worn-out-looking old man. 

 Besides the colonel. Lords Harewood and Darlington and Sir 

 Tatton Sykes hunted the Ainsty country, and some parts by 

 the river Wharfe were given up to them by Mr. Lane Fox on 

 certain conditions. Various other bits were also lent and given 

 before the country settled down into any regular boundaries, 

 ■which it would only be tedious to wade through here. Perhaps, 

 after Melton, a man could scarcely pitch his tent in more genial 

 quarters, if he is fond of society, than York ; and a sojourn at the 

 Yorkshire Club is likely to put him out of conceit with a great 

 many hunting quarters he may find elsewhere. Then, if his stud 

 ran short when I was there, he could replenish it from Mr. E. 

 Cooper's stables with nags which, if rum ones to look at, were, 

 as a rule, good ones to go ; and my own experience of them is 

 that, when hounds ran and they got warm, the horses from the 



