The glossopetrae are naturally of a conic figure, representing acute, obtuse, regular, and irregular cones.

The books which she studied at the age of seventeen, as we know by the date of the notes, were Bridge's "Conic Sections," Hutton's "Mathematics," and Bowditch's "Navigator."

[Footnote P: Pike is a word very commonly used in the north of England, to signify a high mountain of the conic form, as Langdale pike, etc.]

The disciples of Plato invented conic sections, and discovered the geometrical foci.

His most important work is a treatise on conic sections, which was regarded with unbounded admiration by contemporaries, and in some respects is unsurpassed by any thing produced by modern mathematicians.

Thus I made models, not only of regular solids, regularly irregular solids, cones cut in all directions so as to shew the conic sections, and the like, but also of six-gun batteries, intrenchments and fortresses of various kinds &c. "From various books I had learnt the construction of the steam-engine: the older forms from the Dictionary of Arts and Sciences; newer forms from modern books.

I find that I copied out Vince's Conic Sections in February, 1819.

There are also Finite Differences and their Calculus, Figure of the Earth (force to the center), various Attractions (some evidently referring to Maclaurin's), Integrals, Conic Sections, Kepler's Problem, Analytical Geometry, D'Alembert's Theorem, Spherical Aberration, Rotations round three axes (apparently I had been reading Euler), Floating bodies, Evolute of Ellipse, Newton's treatment of the Moon's Variation.

Adj. rotund; round &c (circular) 247; cylindric, cylindrical, cylindroid^; columnar, lumbriciform^; conic, conical; spherical, spheroidal; globular, globated^, globous^, globose; egg shaped, bell shaped, pear shaped; ovoid, oviform; gibbous; rixiform^; campaniform^, campanulate^, campaniliform^; fungiform^, bead-like, moniliform^, pyriform^, bulbous; tres atque rotundus

In this we have a specimen-collection of the vast accumulation; and, working from these as the high analytical mathematician may work from the admitted results of his conic sections, he proceeds to deduce all the conclusions to which he wishes to conduct his readers.

The number of orphans receiving instruction is three hundred and one; they are cleanly and comfortably lodged, and well-boarded; their ages average from ten to fourteen and a half, and the upper classes of the school are taught conic sections, geometry, chemistry, natural philosophy, navigation, astronomy, mechanics, physical geography, &c.

From the top is an extensive view over the island of Sphacteria, the port, with the town of Navarino to the south, and a considerable tract of the territory anciently called Messenia on the east, with the conic hill, which, though some miles from the shore, is used as a landmark to point out the entrance of the port.

Across the valley from Whitchurch rise the outstanding eminences"Coney" (Conic or King's) Castle and Lambert's Castle, the latter crowned with a fine clump of trees.

The cubby-hole in which Hildreth earned his bread by the sweat of his brain was dark even at midday; and during working hours the editor sat under a funnel-shaped reflector in a conic shower-bath of electric light which flooded man and desk and left the corners of the room in a penumbra of grateful twilight.

It was a delightful task for him to lead them through the pleasant valleys of conic sections, and beside the still waters of the integral calculus.

and "Let us go and call upon Old Sykes" or "Old Roots" or "Old Conic-Sections,"thus meaning to designate Professor, LL.D., A.A.S., F.R.S., etc.

no one enter, who is unacquainted with geometry,"and had himself unveiled the geometrical analysis, exhibiting the whole strength and weakness of the instrument, and applying it successfully in the discussion of the properties of the Conic Sections.

The breadth and facility of these solutions added a new charm to the investigation of curves; and passing lightly by the Conic Sections, the mathematicians of that day busied themselves in finding the areas, solids of revolution, tangents, etc., of all imaginable curves,some of them remarkable enough.

A certain Chever also performed sundry singular mathematical feats, such as squaring the circle, a problem which he reduced to the single question, Construere mundum divinae menti analogum, and showing that the parabola, the only conic section squared by ancient or modern geometers, could never be quadrated, to the eternal discomfiture and discredit of the shade of Archimedes.

[Footnote 3: Pascal, who wrote a treatise on Conic sections at the age of 16, and had composed most of his mathematical works and made his chief experiments in science by the age of 26, was in constant suffering, by disease, from his 18th year until his death, in 1662, at the age stated in the text.

By taking a more general view of the subject, Newton showed that a conic section was the only curve in which a body could move when acted upon by a force varying inversely as the square of the distance; and he established the conditions depending on the velocity and the primitive position of the body which were requisite to make it describe a circular, an elliptical, a parabolic, or a hyperbolic orbit.

Besides theological writings, he contributed much to mathematical science, especially in the directions of conic sections, analytic geometry, higher plane curves, and the geometry of three dimensions.

Undoubtedly, in the straight line, in the conic sections, in the innumerable composite curves of the mathematician, lie the germs of all these symbolic expressions.

PARABOLA, a conic section formed by the intersection of a cone by a plane parallel to one of its sides.

This line of attack also failed him, as did various attempts to find relations between his measurements of refraction and conic sections, and he broke off suddenly with a diatribe against Tycho's critics, whom he likened to blind men disputing about colours.