In several of our Sabbath hymns there is poetical reference to the lark and its song.

For instance, that favorite psalm of gratitude for returning Spring opens with these lines:-- "The winter is over and gone, The thrush whistles sweet on the spray, The turtle breathes forth her soft moan, The _lark_ mounts on high and warbles away." Now, not one American man, woman, or child in a thousand ever heard or saw an English lark, and how is he, she, or it to sing the last line of the foregoing verse with the spirit and understanding due to an exercise of devotion?
The American lark never mounts higher than the top of a meadow elm, on which it see-saws, and screams, or quacks, till it is tired; then draws a bee-line for another tree, or a fence-post, never even undulating on the voyage.

It may be said, truly enough, that the hymn was written in England.

Still, if sung in America from generation to generation, we ought to have the English lark with us, for our children to see and hear, lest they may be tempted to believe that other and more serious similes in our Sabbath hymns are founded on fancy instead of fact.
Nor would it be straining the point, nor be dealing in poetical fancies, if we should predicate upon the introduction of the English lark into American society a supplementary influence much needed to unify and nationalise the heterogeneous elements of our population.
Men, women, and children, speaking all the languages and representing all the countries and races of Europe, are streaming in upon us weekly in widening currents.

The rapidity with which they become assimilated to the native population is remarkable.