VOLNEY, v61'nT (Fr. vIll-n4), Constantin Francois de Chasseboeuf, COMTE DE, French author: b. Craon, Anjou, 3 Feb. 1757; d. Paris, 25 April 1820. He traveled in Egypt and Syria, and urged upon France the conquest of the former in his (Considerations sur la guerre actuelle des Turcs avec les Russes' (1788). Elected to the National Assembly in 1789, he was imprisoned for opposition to the Terror, and on his release made a tour of the United States, described in (Tableau du climat et du sol des Etats-Unis d'Amerique) (1803). After his return he became senator. His best known work is (Le ruines ou meditations sur les rev olutions des Empires) (1791), a vision of a historico-philosophic sort, in which, near the ruins of Palmyra, representatives of all civiliza tions and faiths pass by and are reviewed. Consult Berger, (Etudes sur Volney' (1832) ; Barni, 'Les moralistes Francais' (1873).
VOLOGDA, Russia, (1) a town, capital of the government of the same name, on the Vologda, in the southwest of the gov ernment, in a beautiful district extensively oc cupied with gardenst 35 miles east-southeast of Petrograd. It consists chiefly of old wooden
houses, with a few stone buildings in the modern style in the chief square, and has manu factures of linen, lace, soap, candles, glass, leather, etc. Pop. about 41,600. (2) The government of Vologda in the northeast of Russia is bounded north by the govenunent of Archangel; east by the Ural Mountains; south by Perm, Viatka, Kostroma and Yaroslaf ; and west by Novgorod and Olonetz; area, 155,265 square miles. The surface consists generally of a plateau covered with woods, lakes and morasses. The drainage almost wholly be longs to the basin of the Northern Ocean, most of the rivers being tributaries of the Dvina. The great wealth of the government consists in its forests, which furnish timber and charcoaL Pop. 1,772,200.