20 FEBRUARY 1959, Page 27

Longhouse and Jungle. By Guy Arnold. (Chatto and Windus, 21s.)

Lightly scholarly and faintly stylish account, by its leader, of an Oxford Univer- sity expedition to a remote tableland in Borneo, carried there by dugout canoe, and sometimes supplied from the air—beyond the settled country of the no longer headhunting Dayaks,. in their longhouses, to the jungle fastnesses of the Penans, paleskinned because they seldom see the sun, who hunt pig for the pot with blowpipes and poisoned darts. It must have been a boyishly enthusiastic jaunt, for all its scientific purpose, and it makes good reading.