GOPHER WOOD. The wood of which Noah's ark was made (Gen. vi. 14). The word occurs only in this passage, is not found in the Semitic languages other than Hebrew, and its true mean ing is not known. It has been conjectured to be akin to the Hebrew kopher, bitumen, or gophrith, pitch; but it is hard to see what connection this can have with Noah's ark. Some resinous wood seems to be required, and opinion vacillates be tween the cedar and the cypress.
"Awn...v.-pm 7., ge pert, HEINRICH ROBERT (1800 84). A German paleontologist and botanist, born at Sprottau, and educated at Breslau and Berlin. He was teacher at the Medico-Chirurgical In stitute for twenty years, and became professor of botany at the University of Breslau in 1831. During the last thirty years of his life he was director of the botanical garden of Breslau. Be sides his important compilation and classification of all fossilized plants known prior to 1850 in Brown's Index Palwontologicus (1848-50), he wrote a very large number of works, chiefly on vegetable physiology and phytopaleontology.
Among these are: Die fossilen Koniferen ver glichen mit denen. der Jetztwelt, with 58 plates (1850) ; Skizzen zur Kenntnis der Urwilkler Bdhmens and Schlesiens (1868); Ueber die fos site Flora der silurischen, devonischen, and un tern Kohlen formation (1860); Die Flora des Bernsteins (1883).
GoPPINGEN, getping-en. A town of the Kingdom of Wurttemberg, Germany, situated on the Fils, 26 miles by rail from Stuttgart (Map: Germany, C 4). It has an old castle, built in the sixteenth century. It is an important industrial centre, with manufactures of cotton goods, ma chinery, and corsets. Population, in 1890, 14, 352; in 1900, 19,384, principally Protestants.