In the present Treatise the Conic Sections are dened with reference to a focus and directrix, and I have endeavoured to place before the student the most important properties of those curves, deduced, as closely as possible, from the denition. The construction which is given in the rst Chapter for the determination of points in a conic section possesses several advantages; in particular, it leads at once to the constancy of the ratio of the square on the ordinate to the rectangle under its distances from the vertices; and, again, in the case of the hyperbola, the directions of the asymptotes follow immediately from the construction. In several cases.
