ANNECY, the chief town of the department of Haute Savoie in France. Pop. (1906) 10,763. It is situated at a height of 1470 ft., at the northern end of the lake of Annecy, and is 25 m. by rail N.E. of Aix les Bains. The surrounding country presents many scenes of beauty. The town itself is a pleasant residence, and contains a 16th century cathedral church, an 18th century bishop’s palace, a 14th-16th century castle (formerly the residence of the counts of the Genevois), and the reconstructed convent of the Visitation, wherein now reposes the body of St François de Sales (born at the castle of Sales, close by, in 1567; died at Lyons in 1622), who held the see from 1602 to 1622. There is also a public library, with 20,000 volumes, and various scientific collections, and a public garden, with a statue of the chemist Berthollet (1748-1822), who was born not far off. The bishop’s see of Geneva was transferred hither in 1535, after the Reformation, but suppressed in 1801, though revived in 1822. There are factories of linen and cotton goods, and of felt hats, paper mills, and a celebrated bell foundry at Annecy le Vieux. This last-named place existed in Roman times. Annecy itself was in the 10th century the capital of the counts of the Genevois, from whom it passed in 1401 to the counts of Savoy, and became French in 1860 on the annexation of Savoy.
The Lake of Annecy is about 9 m. in length by 2 m. in breadth, its surface being 1465 ft. above the level of the sea. It discharges its waters, by means of the Thioux canal, into the Fier, a tributary of the Rhone.
(W. A. B. C.)
ANNELIDA, a name derived from J.B.P. Lamarck’s term Annélides, now used to denote a major phylum or division of coelomate invertebrate animals. Annelids are segmented worms, and differ from the Arthropoda (q.v.), which they closely resemble in many respects, by the possession of a portion of the coelom traversed by the alimentary canal. In the latter respect, and in the fact that they frequently develop by a metamorphosis, they approach the Mollusca (q.v.), but they differ from that group notably in the occurrence of metameric segmentation affecting many of the systems of organs. The body-wall is highly muscular and, except in a few probably specialized cases, possesses chitinous spines, the setae, which are secreted by the ectoderm and are embedded in pits of the skin. They possess a modified anterior end, frequently with special sense organs, forming a head, a segmented nervous system, consisting of a pair of anterior, dorsally-placed ganglia, a ring surrounding the alimentary canal, and a double ventral ganglionated chain, a definite vascular system, an excretory system consisting of nephridia, and paired generative organs formed from the coelomic epithelium. They are divided as follows: (1) Haplodrili (q.v.) or Archiannelida; (2) Chaetopoda (q.v.); (3) Myzostomida (q.v.), probably degenerate Polychaeta; (4) Hirudinea (see [Chaetopoda] and [Leech]); (5) Echiuroidea (q.v.).
(P. C. M.)
ANNET, PETER (1693-1769), English deist, is said to have been born at Liverpool. A schoolmaster by profession, he became prominent owing to his attacks on orthodox theologians, and his membership of a semi-theological debating society, the Robin Hood Society, which met at the “Robin Hood and Little John” in Butcher Row. To him has been attributed a work called A History of the Man after God’s own Heart (1761), intended to show that George II. was insulted by a current comparison with David. The book is said to have inspired Voltaire’s Saul. It is also attributed to one John Noorthouck (Noorthook). In 1763 he was condemned for blasphemous libel in his paper called the Free Enquirer (nine numbers only). After his release he kept a small school in Lambeth, one of his pupils being James Stephen (1758-1832), who became master in Chancery. Annet died on the 18th of January 1769. He stands between the earlier philosophic deists and the later propagandists of Paine’s school, and “seems to have been the first freethought lecturer” (J.M. Robertson); his essays (A Collection of the Tracts of a certain Free Enquirer, 1739-1745) are forcible but lack refinement. He invented a system of shorthand (2nd ed., with a copy of verses by Joseph Priestley).