Orbs through the Ages

Learned Sir,
I write to you as a whilom Denier of the Existence of "Aubs". "Pish!" it was my wont to say when my credulous fellow-man put credit in Entities of too rarefied a nature as to be seen by Eye, yet able to be captured by modern Mechanical Arts. And "Posh!" I would expostulate. "Thou hast no more sense than a Papist! Thy precious Aubs are mere Ignes Fatui, Arty-facks and Flawes of the Etching Process!"

This week last, withal, my mind was changed and made anew when my new DeBry & Associates Woode-Cut Apparatus with the high-speed Flash Attachment arrived by Mail-coach at my country estate in the County of O______. Straight I put it to the Trial by woodcutting one or two pictureskew scenes of the Gothick sensibility. I attach the results herewith, for your use perhaps in your Coffeehouse Broadsheet, for note ye well that both the Feral Baby and the Bird upon the Wing are surrounded by a veritable Swarm of Aubs, that godsooth were not there to my Eye when I incised the wood!

Now I do not presume to side with the learned Dr Dee on one side of the Contra-versy, who holds that these 'Aubs' are living beings like unto the animalcules of Leeuwenhoek or the 'cells' of Robt. Hooke, but Gargantuan in dimension and of another plane orthogonal to ours -- his 'Wholly Ineffable Meta Protozoa'. Nor with Kepler his detractor, who holds them to be no more than the dander of God, or perhaps Angel Poop.

Yours, D____ N____ (Bt.)
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The circular Orbs that are the only form observed these days are evidently the last surviving member of a whole family of geometrical shapes. It is a mystery.