NOTES 67 
of active service his spare time was given to the study of 
bird life, and his unfinished account of the avifauna of 
Europe and the neighbouring lands, for the completion of 
which arrangements have been made, promises to be of great 
value to the naturalist traveller. Although he himself made 
no contribution to the study of Scottish natural history 
the Royal Scottish Museum is the richer for a series of 
several thousands of bird skins gifted by him from the 
extensive Tweeddale collection. 
How Hedgehogs Climb.—For many years past I have 
transported every Hedgehog that my friends and I could capture 
to the flower garden, and there liberated them in the hope that 
they would rid us of part of the legion of slugs that work so much 
mischief on young growth. By this time, had these animals 
thriven, there must have been a considerable population; but so 
far as ocular evidence goes, not one remains, nor have I detected 
the remains of any dead ones. Now the flower garden lies right 
up against the house, through which no Hedgehog can pass, the 
rest of the circumference being securely fenced against ground 
game by brick walls and wire netting. It has puzzled me to 
divine how my captives have regained their liberty. The mystery 
has now been solved. A young lady, paying us a visit, found a 
full-grown Hedgehog hanging alive by a hind-leg on the top of 
a fence of galvanised wire netting round a young plantation. The 
limb, which was broken, had got fixed in the wire, and the 
poor beast was doomed to a lingering death, had she not released 
it and brought it home. It is hard to conceive of any mammal 
less nimble than a Hedgehog, yet it seems pretty clear that this 
one had scaled a vertical fence of wire netting and, but for the 
misadventure, would have dropped safely on the other side.— 
HERBERT MAXWELL, Monreith. 
Birds in a Storm in the Outer Hebrides.—‘‘I wasin South 
Uist on 15th November of this year (1920), when we experienced 
a gale of over ninety miles an hour. Such a wind prevents one 
standing upright to shoot and made walking against it extremely 
difficult. We were at times literally carried off our feet, and for 
safety’s sake carried our guns unloaded. 
‘During the morning I visited the extensive grass area, called 
‘machar,’ and numerous small lochs near the sea, Whooper 
