The Rapid Communications section is intended for the accelerated publication of important new results Since. manuscripts submitted to this section are giuen priority treatment both in the edt torial 'once and in production, authors should explain in their submittal letter why the workjustifies this special handling ARa. pid Communication should be no longer than 4 printed pages and must be accompanied by an abstract Page p. roofs are sent to authors.Studies of Rydberg-atom destruction in collisions with the polar targets CH3I and CH2Br& for values of principal quantum number n in the range 100 -400 are reported. Analysis of the data using the essentially-free-electron model suggests that, for ultralow electron energies (-80 peV to 1 meV), the cross section o. (c) for rotationally inelastic scattering of electrons by a polar target varies approximately as 1/c, where c is the electron energy. The Born approximation does not predict such behavior at very low collision energies, and possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed. PACS number(s): 34.80.i, 34.60.+ z