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Ancient British Caves. The Bee-hive Cave at Chapel Euny, 
and the Longitudinal Cave at Chyoyster, each built with 
overlapping stones.* By R. EpMonps, Esq. 
The “bee-hive hut” constructed with overlapping stones, 
appears, from the paper of Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson in the 
last year’s Report of this Institution, to be found in Cornwall 
only on Brown Willy. But no “ bee-hive” cave seems to have 
been found any where except at Chapel Euny, on the west of 
Penzance. This cave, and the cave at Chyoyster,t on the 
north of Penzance, I have described in the Report of this 
Institution for 1857. Having in that year, when in the 
neighbourhood of Chapel Euny, accidentally heard that an 
ancient cave had been opened by some miners, I went imme- 
diately to the spot, and observed that the innermost part of it 
was in the form of a bee-hive, and so built that each succes- 
sive layer of stones projected considerably over the layer next 
below it. This led me to suspect a similar overlapping of the 
layers forming the walls of the longitudinal cave at Chyoyster, 
and having gone thither shortly afterwards with a neigh- 
bouring farmer, we found the stones overlapping one another 
in the manner I had anticipated. Prior to this no one appears 
to have noticed this very remarkable and most striking pecu- 
liarity. I will now add a few more particulars respecting 
these caves, both of which are built of uncemented stones 
unmarked by any tool. The longitudinal one at Chyoyster, or 
rather the exposed part of what remains of it, is internally 
about four feet wide at the roof, and the highest layer of 
stones which supports the massive slabs (five or six feet long) 
forming the roof, projects over the lowest layer, now in sight, 
about a foot on each side in a depth of three feet perpendicu- 
larly, so that when the soil now deeply covering the floor is 
* Read at the Meeting of the Royal Institution of Cornwall on the 10th of 
May 1861. 
¢ This village is called Chysoyster in the Ordnance Map, but I have omitted 
the fourth letter, as Martyn spells it without that letter in his very much 
older map of Cornwall. 
{See also Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal for Jan. 1858, p. 146— 
the author’s name being by mistake printed Hdwards. 
