As to the fish bones to be sometimes met with in the water-vole's holes, the dusky-coated and white-vested dipper and the beautiful plumaged king-fisher are alone to blame. The castings, indeed, of a single pair of king-fishers would of itself suffice to account for all the fish bones one meets with by the banks of ponds and streams, for the beautiful Alcedo is a voracious fish-devourer, and his hole going backwards and upwards some three or four feet into the bank, invariably a perfect charnel-house of bleached fish bones of minnows and troutlets. The number of small fish that a pair of king-fishers, with their young, dispose of in a single season must amount to many thousands, and as the larger bones at least are always cast or regurgitated, their presence may always be taken as a sure indication that the spot has recently been the haunt of the most beautifully coloured of British birds. When the bones of larger fish, however, are met with, the blame, if blame there be, must be shifted from the king-fisher to the shoulders of one or other or all of the animals above mentioned. It is only fair that the spirit of our laws, which accounts a man innocent until he is proved guilty, should be extended to beasts and birds as well. In this view of the matter the water-vole has good reason of complaint that it has been over hastily and unwarrantably condemned on insufficient evidence, without even the form of a fair and impartial trial. Unlike Ritson, the antiquary and balladist, who, although he was a strict vegetarian in diet, holding all manner of animal food in utter abhorrence, and writing a volume on the subject, was yet as cross-grained and as irascible as a wasp, the water-vole, like a true vegetarian, is quiet and unobtrusive even to timidity, leading an inoffensive life, and in his play hours, which--in proof of his good sense, let us remark--are very numerous, as frolicsome and sportive as a kitten. He will show fight, it is true, if attacked in his hole or otherwise brought to bay, and his bite, whether on the nose of an over-venturesome terrier, or the hand that would rashly seize him, is very severe and difficult to heal; but it is only doing him the merest justice that those who know him should bear witness that in general character and disposition he is the most peaceable and harmless of animals. CHAPTER XXIII. March--The Story of a Spanish Dollar--The Spanish Armada--The "Florida"--Faire-Chlaidh, or Watching of the Graveyard--Molehill Earth for Flowers.