Retiring from the army after the peace of 1763, John Hunter found his place in his brother’s dissecting-room occupied by Mr. Hewson, a most capable dissector and lecturer. Hence he had no option but to depend on his own exertions, and he started in London practice as a surgeon in Golden Square. He found that practice came but slowly, and formed a class for the study of anatomy and practical surgery to add to his income. This, too, never proved nearly so remunerative as his brother’s lectures, owing to John’s defects of style and expression already mentioned. His success in practice was also retarded by his refusal or failure to employ any of the arts or tact needed to gain personal popularity. Although he was a good convivial companion, at any rate in his earlier days, any festive enjoyment was always subordinated to his zeal for a new specimen or a rare case, from which he could learn something. He would take any trouble, or go any distance, with these ends in view; while his feeling about an ordinary case may be gathered from a remark to his attached friend, Lynn, as he laid aside his dissecting instruments—“Well, Lynn, I must go and earn this d——d guinea, or I shall be sure to want it to-morrow.” Mere fashionableness Hunter could not tolerate. Dr. Garthshore, a physician of the old school, always formal, polite, and well dressed, accosting him one day in his dissecting-room with his usual _empressement_, “My d-e-a-r John Hunter,”—was astonished to hear the mocking reply, “My d-e-a-r Tom Fool.” The busy dissector was not likely to value highly the formalities of the courtly doctor, who as a contemporary remarks, “occasionally looked in, wound up his watch, and fell asleep.” Finding his collection of live animals grow beyond his means of providing for them in town, Hunter purchased a considerable piece of ground at Earl’s Court, then about two miles outside London, and built upon it a house with a lawn behind it, upon and around which he kept a collection of curious variety, and sometimes under comparatively slight control, in order that their habits might the more readily be watched. On one occasion two leopards got loose, and one was scaling the boundary wall, while the other was engaged in combat with dogs, when Mr. Hunter, unarmed, went out and seized them both and replaced them in their outhouse; an act of courage which, when it was over, nearly caused him to faint.