It is to be remarked that the classification mixes together non-singular and singular curves, in fact, the five kinds presently referred to: thus the hyperbolas and the divergent parabolas include curves of every kind, the separation being made in the species; the hyperbolisms of the hyperbola and ellipse, and the trident curve, are nodal; the hyperbolisms of the parabola, and the cubical parabola, are cuspidal.
There are two non-singular kinds, the one with, the other without, an oval, but each of them has an infinite (as Newton describes it) campaniform branch; this cuts the axis at right angles, being at first concave, but ultimately convex, towards the axis, the two legs continually tending to become at right angles to the axis.
We have herein a better principle of classification; considering cubic curves, in the first instance, according to singularities, the curves are non-singular, nodal (viz.
crunodal or acnodal), or cuspidal; and we see further that there are two kinds of non-singular curves, the complex and the simplex.
And it then appears that there are two kinds of non-singular cubic cones, viz, the simplex, consisting of a single sheet, and the complex, consisting of a single sheet and a twin-pair sheet; and we thence obtain (as for cubic curves) the crunodal, the acnodal and the cuspidal kinds of cubic cones.