OOLITIC SYSTEM OF SCOTLAND. 373 
find that, along these old Oolitic shores of Scotland, as along 
the shores of our country in the present day, the rocks were 
inhabited by their hermit shells, — the Hdomites of the mollus- 
cous world, as a modern naturalist poetically terms them, — 
that spent silent lives in excavating for themselves cells in the 
stone, in which they watched in patience for the food brought 
them by wavelet and current, and which, like the cells of so 
many other anchorites and recluses, were ultimately to prove 
their sepulchres. The idea that stones and rocks should be 
thus inhabited is an idea old as eternity: it must have had be- 
ing as an idea ere the existence of rock, or coral, or molluscous 
life; for He from whom it emanated saw the end from the 
beginning, and makes no accessions to his fund of thought; and 
to be permitted thus to trace it towards its source, and to detect 
it embodied in a creation whose last surviving organism perished 
myriads of ages ago, enables us in some degree to conceive of 
the fact, and to conceive also of the fixed character, of that 
Master Existence, the Author of all, who said, in a long pos- 
terior age, when revealing Himself to man, “I am the Lord; 
I change not.” 
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