REAPING MACHINES RECAMIER 229 of the public in the highway is, ordinarily, only an easement. The fee in the soil belongs to the abuttors, and the complete use of the ground re- turns to them whenever it becomes discharged of the easement. The road bed of railways is generally subject to the same rules. The right of soil in land bounded by navigable rivers where the tide ebbs and flows, belongs to the owner of the land as far as low-water mark. The right to navigate such waters belongs, in all states of the tide, to the public. Grants upon streams above the flow of the tide con- vey not only the banks but the beds of the streams and the islands in them to the middle line of the water (ad filum medium aquce). But the right of the grantee is qualified by the right of the public to use the stream as a highway if it be navigable. REAPING MACHINES. See MOWING AND HEAP- ING MACHINES. RKVnutt, Rene Antoine Forehault de, a French natural philosopher, born in La Rochelle, Feb. 28, 1683, died Oct. 18, 1757. He studied law at Bourges. but went to Paris in 1703, gained distinction by his philosophical researches, and in 1708 was admitted to the academy of sci- ences. In his L'Art de convertir le for forge en acier, et Tart d'adoucir leferfondu (1722), he first made known in France the process of manufacturing steel. For this he received a pension of 12,000 livres, which he applied to the encouragement of the industrial arts. He invented a process for tinning iron, and made experiments in the manufacture of porcelain ; an opaque white glass which he made is known as " Reaumur's porcelain." He also discov- ered the means of preserving eggs, and made experiments in artificial incubation. In 1731 he invented the thermometer which is called after him, and is still largely used in Germany and other parts of the European continent, taking as the extremes the freezing and boiling points of water, and dividing the interval into 80 degrees. He investigated many curious topics in natural history, especially the mode of formation and growth of the scales of fishes, the development of the shells of testaceous animals, the reproduction of the claws of lob- sters and crabs, and the mode of motion of star fishes and various mollusks and zoophytes. He discovered a species of mollusk that fur- nishes a purple dye nearly equal to that used by the ancients. His most thorough investiga- tions were in the department of entomology, to which he devoted several years. He pub- lished Memoires pour servir d Vhistoire natu- relle des insectes (6 vols. 4to, 1734-'42), and a variety of papers in the transactions of the academy of sciences. REBEKAH. See ISAAC, and JACOB. REBOLLEDO, Bernardino, count de, a Spanish author, born in Leon in 1597, died in Madrid in 1676. He served in Italy and against the Turks, took part in the thirty years' war, was created by Ferdinand II. a count of the Ger- man empire, and received the government of the Lower Palatinate. He was several years ambassador to Denmark, and from 1662 till his death was president of the board of war at Madrid. He wrote Ocios (" Leisure Hours," Antwerp, 1650); Selvas militares y pol'iticas, poems on the arts of war and civil govern- ment (Copenhagen, 1652) ; Sefaas ddnicas (4to, 1665), a compendium in verse of the history and geography of Denmark ; and some minor writings. The best edition of his works is that of Madrid (4 vols. 8vo, 1778). RECA9IIER, Jeanne Franfoise Julie Adelaide, a French leader of society, born in Lyons, Dec. 4, 1777, died in Paris, May 11, 1849. Her father was M. Bernard, a banker, connected with the postal service; his receptions were attended by distinguished people, who greatly admired her extraordinary beauty, modesty, and accomplishments. In 1793 she married M. Recamier, a rich banker of middle age, for whom she felt only respect. He purchased in 1798 the hotel Necker, which led to her life- long intimacy with Mme. de Stael. This dis- pleased Napoleon, and she gave him further offence by declining in 1803 to become a lady attendant on the empress Josephine. The bankruptcy of her husband made her in 1804 accept the hospitality of Mme. de Stael at Cop- pet, where she met Prince Augustus of Prus- sia. She had accepted with indifference the homage, though not the friendship, of the brothers Montmorency, Lucien Bonaparte, Benjamin Constant, and other celebrities ; the only man whose affection she seems to have returned was the Prussian prince, but she re- frained from urging a divorce to enable her to accept his proposal of marriage. Napoleon objecting in 1811 to her residing in Paris, she spent some years in Burgundy, Lyons, and Italy. Her patriotism remained, however, un- abated, and when in 1815 the duke of "Welling- ton paid his respects to her and exulted over Waterloo, she forbade him her house. New reverses obliged her to occupy modest apart- ments in the abbaye aux Bois, formerly a con- vent, in the faubourg St. Germain. In 1817, at the death of Mme. de Stael, she first met Chateaubriand, in whose enthusiastic admira- tion she took great pride. His wife dying in 1846, he offered to marry Mme. R6camier, whose husband had died in 1830 ; she declined, but he remained to the last her faithful friend and correspondent. (See Chateaubriand's Me- moires d* outre tombe.) Her partiality for royal- ists and for ultramontane writers of the ro- mantic school, and the occasionally intolerant character of her brilliant receptions, did not escape criticism amid the general admiration which she inspired to the last. See Souvenirs et correspondance tires des papiers de Madame Recamier, edited by her niece and adopted daughter, Mme. Lenormant (2 vols., Paris, 3d ed., 1860; English translation by Isaphene M. Luyster, Boston, 1867), and Madame Recamier, les amis de sajeunesse, by the same (1872 ; Eng- lish translation by I. M. Luyster, Boston, 1875).
