RECRUIT 



early in the 12th century. Before 

 the existing Record Office was 

 built they were deposited in the 

 Bolls Chapel, the Tower of London, 

 the chapter house of Westminster 

 Abbey, the state paper office in 

 St. James's Park, and elsewhere. 

 Among the treasures in the Record 

 Office museum are William the 

 Conqueror's Domesday Book, the 

 Domesday chest, the treaty of the 

 Field of Cloth of Gold, the* anony- 

 mous letter to Lord Monteagle 

 which led to the discovery of the 

 Gunpowder Plot, the black book 

 of the exchequer, plan of the Kirk 

 o' Field, log of the Victory during 

 the battle of Trafalgar, dispatch of 

 Wellington relating to the battle 

 of Waterloo, and the bull of Cle- 

 ment VII confirming Henry VIII 

 in the title of defender of the faith, 

 etc. There are a long series of 

 royal charters, patent rolls, records 

 of the Star Chamber and other 

 historic courts, and MSS. concern- 

 ing the suppression of the monas- 

 teries. Many volumes have been 

 issued under the aegis of the office, 

 calendars of state papers, for 

 example, as well as several un- 

 official works based upon private 

 research among its archives ; but 

 masses of documents still await 

 expert examination. See Hand- 

 book to the Public Records, S. R. 

 Scargill-Bird, 3rd ed. 1908; 

 Sources and Literature of English 

 History to about 1485, C. Gross, 

 2nd ed. 1915. 



Recruit. British destroyer. Of 

 *ie C class, she was launched in 

 1 396. She was sunk by a German 

 submarine in the North Sea, May 1, 

 1915, with the loss of about 25 

 lives. Her displacement was 350 

 tons, and her engines of 6,000 h.p. 

 gave her a speed of 30 knots. A 

 new Recruit, launched Dec., 1916, 

 was sunk by a mine, Aug. 9, 1917. 



Recruiting. Raising of men for 

 military or naval forces. The term 

 is generally applied to the system 

 of voluntary enlistment, in which 

 the man binds himself to agreed 

 conditions of service for a definite 

 period, as practised in Great 

 Britain or the U.S.A. Some au- 

 thorities have estimated the general 

 superiority of a recruited over a 

 conscripted army at 30 p.c. Volun- 

 tary recruiting was temporarily 

 abandoned during the Great War, 

 as the Military Service Acts, 1916- 

 18, established compulsory service, 

 but ordinary recruiting was re- 

 established in 1919, with revised 

 conditions of service. The ad- 

 ministration of recruiting is under 

 the dept. of the adjutant-general 

 in the war office. See Army ; 

 Conscription ; Derby Scheme ; 

 Enlistment ; Foreshortening ; 



Militia ; Navy , Press-Gang. 



6515 



Rectangle (Lat. rectus, right). 

 Plane rectilinear four-sided figure 

 of which all the angles are right 

 angles. The opposite sides are 

 equal and parallel, and the area 

 equals the product of two adja- 

 cent sides. See Geometry. 



Rectification. Term used in 

 English equity, or chancery law. 

 If a mistake has been made in a 

 deed or document, either party can 

 bring an action to have it set right ; 

 and the court, on proof of the error, 

 will order that the deed or docu- 

 ment shall be rectified. Although 

 any branch of the high court has 

 power to order rectification of a 

 document, all actions for rectifica- 

 tion ought to be brought in the 

 chancery division, to which they 

 are assigned by the rule of court. 



Rectification. In mathe- 

 matics, term used for the calcula- 

 tion of the lengths of curved lines. 

 Such lengths are obtained theo- 

 retically by means of the integral 

 calculus. In practice the lengths 

 of curves are often obtained by 

 means of an opisometer. A wheel 

 is run along the line, and by 

 noting the number of revolutions 

 the required length is deduced. In 

 chemistry rectification is a process 

 of purification of liquids by means 

 of fractional distillation. 



Rectified Spirits OK SPIRITS OF 

 WINE. Name given to alcohol recti- 

 fied at a licensed rectifier's pre- 

 mises. It is spirit which is of a 

 minimum strength 43 over proof. 

 See Alcohol ; Proof Spirit. 



Rectifier. In electricity, a 

 device which converts alternating 

 current into uni-directional cur- 

 rent. It is frequently employed 

 in connexion with electric arc 

 lamps and motors taking current 

 from an A.C. main. The electro- 

 lytic rectifier makes use of the fact 

 that, in a cell containing electrodes 

 of lead and aluminium, current will 

 pass freely from the lead to the 

 aluminium, but not in the reverse 

 direction. By a suitable arrange- 

 ment of cells in the A.C. circuit, 

 the current can be made to flow in 

 one direction only through the 

 secondary circuit. The Cooper- 

 Hewitt mercury vapour rectifier 

 converts in a somewhat similar 

 manner, as the vapour offers high 

 resistance to current in one di- 

 rection, but very little resistance 

 in the other. 



In the rotary rectifier the al- 

 ternating current is made to drive 

 a small synchronous motor which 

 revolves a commutator divided 

 round the face into two parts, 

 from which project square inter- 

 locking teeth, those of one part 

 insulated from those of the other. 

 Alternating current is fed to the 

 two parts by brushes, and picked 



RECTUM 



off by two others connected with 

 the D.C. circuit. The collecting 

 brushes are so spaced that one of 

 them is always on the positive side 

 of the zigzag line, and the other on 

 the negative, though the two parto 

 of the commutator change sign 

 with a regular periodicity. Con- 

 version is in fact similar to that 

 of a direct-current dynamo, except 

 that the commutator is not part 

 of the generator, but driven by a 

 machine in step with it. 



In magnetic rectifiers one ter- 

 minal of the uni-directional circuit 

 is connected with a vibrating 

 tongue, the other with the central 

 point of the secondary winding of 

 a small static transformer. A per- 

 manent magnet mounted on the 

 tongue is affected by the reversals 

 of magnetism in the transformer 

 field, and causes the tongue to 

 vibrate to and fro between the ter- 

 minals of the secondary winding. 

 At each reversal the tongue makes 

 contact with whichever terminal 

 is for the moment negative. 



Rector (Lat., ruler). In eccle- 

 siastical law, an incumbent of a 

 benefice who enjoys all the tithes, 

 whereas a vicar draws only a part. 

 The word is also widely used in the 

 United States for the incumbents 

 of parishes in the Protestant Epis- 

 copal Church. The Roman Catho- 

 lics use it mainly for the head of a 

 religious house or college. At Ox- 

 ford the heads of Lincoln and 

 Exeter Colleges are known as 

 rectors. In Scotland each of the 

 four universities has a lord rector. 

 He is elected by the students every 

 three years and the office usually 

 falls to a prominent politician or 

 man of letters. Certain Scottish 

 schools, e.g. Glasgow Academy, call 

 their headmaster the rector. See 

 Benefice ; Ecclesiastical Law, 



Rectum. Terminal part of the 

 large intestine, ending in the anus. 

 It is about 8 inches long. Dilata- 

 tion of the veins in the mucous 

 membrane in the lower part of the 

 rectum gives rise to haemorrhoids 

 or piles. Cancer of the rectum is 

 most often a disease of middle or 

 late life. The early symptoms are 

 sensations of uneasiness, constipa- 

 tion with intermittent diarrhoea, 

 and passage of bloodstained mucus. 

 If the disease is diagnosed early, 

 complete removal and recovery 

 may be possible. A rectal fistula is 

 an abnormal passage between the 

 rectum and an adjacent organ or 

 the external surface. The com- 

 monest form is a fistula-in-ano. A 

 complete fistula opens internally 

 into the bowel and externally 

 through the skin. 



Inflammation of the rectum is 

 known as proctitis, and may be 

 due to chronic constipation, new 



