MEADOWLARK (Sturnella magna), a well-known North American bird which, like the skylark (Alauda arvensis) of Europe, frequents meadows and sometimes sings on the wing. It is about 11 in. long, with brown back, yellow breast and black throat. The meadowlark is not related to the true larks, which are represented in America by the horned lark (Otocoris alpestris), but is an aberrant member of the American family Icteridae, which includes the blackbirds and orioles of that conti nent. The meadowlark has a musical whistle of three notes. It inhabits eastern North America southward to northern South America, but is replaced in the west by the allied western meadow lark (S. neglecta), which has a much richer and more varied song. MEADVILLE, a city of north-western Pennsylvania, U.S.A., the county seat of Crawford county; on French creek and Federal highways 19 and 322, and served by the Bessemer and Lake Erie and the Erie railways, interurban trolleys and motor-bus lines. Pop. (1920) 14,568; 56,698 in 1930. It
is the seat of Allegheny college (Methodist Episcopal; 1815) and the Pennsylvania college of music ; is the commercial centre of a fertile agricultural region, in which there is also found natural gas ; and has extensive railroad shops and various other manufacturing industries, with an output in 1925 valued at $10,070,046. There are wild and rugged ravines of great beauty near the city, and it is surrounded by the foot-hills of the Alle ghenies. Meadville is the oldest settlement in north-western Pennsylvania. It was founded by David Mead in 1793 as a fortified post, laid out as a town in 1795, incorporated as a borough in 1823 and chartered as a city in 1866.