AN ANCIENT BRITISH BARROW 
163 
beyond the fossil-collecting stage. Space prevents our touching 
for the present upon other aspects of this e.xcellent initial step; 
but mention must be made of the admirable series of stalls 
furnished by the publishers and makers of apparatus. Messrs. 
Ginn and others showed how much richer in te.xt-books on 
Nature-study our American cousins are than ourselves; whilst 
— save perhaps on the score of cost — Messrs. Rudd’s hermeti- 
cally sealed glass cases of insect life-histories could leave little 
to be desired. 
AN ANCIENT BRITISH BARROW. 
AM venturing to write a short account of a barrow in 
Cornwall which I e.xamined last August, although the 
subject is not strictly natural history, and therefore 
does not perhaps come into the scope of the Selborne 
Magazine. 
Chapel Cam Brea is a large hill situated in the division 
of Pemoith, about four miles from Land’s End, Cornwall, 
and must not be confounded with Cam Brea, another hill of the 
same name near Truro, also very interesting and having British 
remains. 
One morning last summer I set out to examine the 
“ barrows ” of which I had read in guide-books. Arrived at 
the bottom, the ascent was commenced along a narrow track 
which w'ound upwards towards the summit. In some parts it 
was thick with gorse covered with gossamer, and making fit 
resting-places for many butterflies — peacocks, tortoise-shells, and 
whites in thousands. About half-way up the hill-side we leave 
the track and turn into an almost unused pathway winding through 
the gorse, interspersed with large granite boulders. At last we 
have reached the top and behold before us a large cairn of piled- 
up granite. On closer inspection we discover a little doorway, 
into which a slim person may crawl. Within this he finds a 
small chamber neatly built and roofed with slabs of granite. Its 
dimensions are roughly ; length, seven feet ; breadth, one foot 
six inches; height, two feet. Two others may be discovered by 
close inspection, one with an entrance too small to be entered, 
the other fallen in. The whole cairn measures about ten feet in 
height. It belongs to the Neolithic period, and was excavated, 
I believe, by Borlase, who found skeletons and pottery which, 
I think, are now at Truro in the museum. 
The view from the top must not go without mention. North- 
wards on the sky-line is visible a fine mass of granite named 
“ Eagle’s Nest,” near Gurnard’s Head. Turning gradually round, 
Penzance, St. Michael’s Mount, and far, far away, the Lizard 
