ment of the west.” Yet even its work in the United States is not all. It is used in 50 other countries, as Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Cape Colony, China, India, Russia and Siberia, and “its click has become the music of an international anthem.” A single Russian province uses 37,000 American harvesters. The American reapers in use in Europe in 1907 did the work of 11,000,000 men. The reaping of wheat costs less than a cent a bushel. Next to Russia, among foreign countries, in the use of the reaper comes Canada, Argentina ranking third.
The industry has attained enormous proportions. One company makes over 700,000 harvesting machines of all varieties each year. In 1911 it sold $108,000,000 worth. In 1909 American farm machines worth $146,326,000 were made. The harvester has to be adapted to the particular conditions of farming in different countries and to the peculiar customs of their farmers. Harvesters must be adapted to big horses in France, camels in Siberia, oxen in India and small horses in Russia; to the careful German of Wisconsin and to the rough ranchers of Argentina. Consult Casson's Romance of the Reaper.
Réaumur (rā′ō′mür′), René Antoine Ferchault de, a prominent man of science in France during the first half of the 18th century, was born in 1683, and died in 1757. He is principally remembered as having devised the thermometric scale which goes by his name, namely, that in which the temperature interval between melting ice and boiling water is divided into 80 degrees. See Celsius, Fahrenheit and Thermometer.
Récamier (rā̇′kȧ′myā̇′), Jean Françoise Julie Adelaide Bernard, was born at Lyons, Dec. 4, 1777. She grew up a girl of remarkable grace and beauty, and at 15 married Jacques Récamier, a rich banker of Paris, three times as old as herself, and immediately entered upon a career of social triumph almost without a parallel even in France. Her salon was soon filled with the brightest wits of the literary and political circles of the day, and, fortunately for herself, she was possessed of a temperament that saved her from temptation and almost from scandal. She had a warm affection for Madame de Staël. When the latter was banished by Napoleon, Madame Récamier did not fail to give the exile her warmest friendship and sympathy. In 1806 the ruin of her husband's fortune caused her to visit Mme. de Staël at Coppet, in Switzerland, and while there she met Prince August of Prussia, who is said to have been the only one of all her admirers that ever touched her heart. A marriage was arranged between them, provided a divorce could be secured. Récamier gave consent, but his mild remonstrance so affected the wife that she declared she could not leave him in his adversity. Madame Récamier died at Paris of cholera, a disease of which she always had a special dread, May 11, 1849.
Receptacle (in plants), that part of a stem-axis upon which the floral organs are inserted. Usually the receptacle becomes much broader or more prominent in some way than the ordinary axis. Torus is an equivalent word. See Flower.
Rechabites, The, a family descended from Hammath, the progenitor of the house of Rechab; otherwise known as the Kenites (I Chron. ii:55). It is recorded in Jeremiah (Jer. xxxv) that the prophet took some Rechabites into the temple and offered them wine to drink and that they declined on the ground that Jhonadab, son of Rechab, their ancestor, had commanded them not to drink wine or other strong drink, to live in houses or to sow seeds or plant vineyards, and had enjoined them to dwell in tents all their days. It appears from other passages in The Bible that the Rechabites were a people who endeavored to resist the customs of settled life in Palestine by maintaining a nomadic ideal; that they existed at different times in the northern and southern kingdoms; and that they were especially interested in the worship of Yhwh [Yahweh or Jehovah]. Their devotion to Yhwh is illustrated by the fact that all known names of individual Rechabites include the divine name. In modern times such societies as total abstinence societies, which observe some of the customs, style themselves Rechabites.
Reciprocity (rĕs′ĭ-prŏs′i-ty̆), an arrangement between two countries charging tariff-duties against other countries, to admit such articles as may be agreed upon into each other's ports free from duty. When the McKinley tariff-law of the United States was passed in 1890, a provision giving the president discretionary power to enter into reciprocity treaties or arrangements with other nations was made one of its leading features.
Rec′lama′tion of Swamp-Lands. The available agricultural lands of the United States are, for the most part, occupied. With a rapidly growing population and increasing demand for agricultural products, the need of additional farm-land has forced itself on the attention of the public and of the national government. This has resulted in the vast undertakings of the government in the reclamation of arid lands by irrigation. (See Irrigation). More recently the reclamation of swamp-lands has claimed attention. The area which has been brought under cultivation by irrigation approximates 8,000,000 acres, and it is thought probable that 12,000,000 acres additional may be reclaimed within the next 25 years. Investigation shows that there are over
