We describe invariant principal and Cartan connections on homogeneous principal bundles and show how to calculate the curvature and the holonomy; in the case of an invariant Cartan connection we give a formula for the infinitesimal automorphisms. The main result of this paper is that the above calculations are purely algorithmic. As an example of an homogeneous parabolic geometry we treat a conformal structure on the product of two spheres.

The concept of homogeneity, which picks out sprays from the general run of systems of second-order ordinary differential equations in the geometrical theory of such equations, is generalized so as to apply to equations of higher order. Certain properties of the geometric concomitants of a spray are shown to continue to hold for higher-order systems. Third-order equations play a special role, because a strong form of homogeneity may apply to them. The key example of a single third-order equation...