Resemblances Between Fishes and Birds
Prof. Gaussen. Genesis 1:20-23 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life… I must tell you of a discovery made by a very dear friend whom I have lost, the excellent Dr. Prevost, a learned anatomist of Geneva. He often mentioned it to me as affording a remarkable testimony to the Word of God. It helps to explain the words of the 20th verse. We may perhaps wonder that two such apparently different kinds of creatures as fishes and birds should be classed together. Who among us would have thought of such an arrangement? But, dear children, scientific men have discovered, on examination, that there are very close resemblances between them in their anatomical structure and in some other things. Both spring from eggs; and while the one class — the birds — swim in the air with wings, the other — the fishes — fly in the water with fins. And besides these points of resemblance, the discovery made by Dr. Prevost, which astonished himself and interested the learned world very much, was this, that the globules of the blood of fishes and birds are seen to be the same, when closely examined, and do not at all resemble the globules of the blood of those animals which sprang from the earth on the sixth day. (Prof. Gaussen.) Parallel Verses KJV: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. WEB: God said, "Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of sky."