That our ancestors lived in caves is attested by the existence of a group of these abodes near Penzance, the most remarkable of all ancient British Caves hitherto discovered in Cornwall, and thus described by Mr. J. Edwards, to the Royal Institution of that county:--"Half of a mile W.S.W. of Caër Bran, and four and a half miles W. by S. of Penzance, there is, in the village of Chapel Euny, a cave, consisting for the most part of a deep trench, walled with stones, and roofed with huge slabs. It extends 30 feet from N.N.W. to S.S.E., and then branches eastward, and probably also to the S. or S.W. So far it accords with the description of an ordinary British cave. But its floor (as I was informed by the miner who opened it about three years ago) was well paved with large granite blocks, beneath which, in the centre, ran a narrow gutter or bolt, made, I imagine, for admitting the external air into the innermost part of the building; from whence, after flowing back through the cave, it escaped by the cave's mouth--a mode of ventilation practised immemorially by the miners in this neighbourhood, when driving adits or horizontal galleries under ground. "Another peculiarity is still more remarkable. Its higher or northern end consisted of a circular floor, 12 feet in diameter, covered with a dome of granite, two-thirds of which are still exposed to view; and my informant had observed a still greater portion of the dome-roofed chamber. Every successive layer of the stones forming the dome overhangs considerably the layer immediately beneath it; so that the stones gradually approach each other as they rise, until the top stones must originally have completed the dome; not, however, like the key-stones of an arch, but by resting horizontally on the immediately subjacent circular layer. The miner found no pottery, or anything else, in the cave. The height of the present wall of the dome is about 6 feet above the lowest part I could see; how much lower the original floor might have been, I could not ascertain. "Another British cave, not even referred to in any publication, is to be seen at Chyoster, nearly three miles north of Penzance, the walls of which, instead of being perpendicular, are constructed on the same principle as the inmost part of the cave at Chapel Euny; so that the tops of these walls which support the huge slabs forming the roof, are much nearer each other than their bases. Each cave formed part of a British village, that of old Chyoster being decidedly in the best state of preservation of all the British villages in this neighbourhood."[2]