The excitable foci of the cerebral cortex are well myelinated long before the unexcitable are so.
Confocal conics are conics having the same foci.
Johann Kepler had proved by an elaborate series of measurements that each planet revolves in an elliptical orbit round the sun, whose centre occupies one of the foci of the orbit, that the radius vector of each planet drawn from the sun describes equal areas in equal times, and that the squares of the periodic times of the planets are in the same proportion as the cubes of their mean distances from the sun.
A line became continuous, returning into itself by way of infinity; two parallel lines intersect in a point at infinity; all circles pass through two fixed points at infinity (the circular points); two spheres intersect in a fixed circle at infinity; an asymptote became a tangent at infinity; the foci of a conic became the intersections of the tangents from the circular points at infinity; the centre of a conic the pole of the line at infinity, &c. In analytical geometry the line at infinity plays an important part in trilinear co-ordinates.
The orbit of the moon around the earth, though not a fixed curve of any class, is elliptical in form, and may be represented by an ellipse which is constantly changing its form and position, and has the earth in one of its foci.