Archie Carr: A Naturalist in Florida
Suwanee River	Suwannee River
	ARCHIE: I began making frequent visits to the Suwannee River...when I was an undergraduate at the University of Florida...a youthful zoologist. Collecting reptiles and amphibians and fish was a large and exciting part of life back in those days... before the coeds arrived at Gainesville; and when there wasn't even any beer.
	Nowhere in the Florida landscape is the natural beauty distilled to its essence as it is in the big springs - the jewels of the Suwannee Valley. These super fountains are a unique natural asset of Florida. They are found nowhere else in such size and abundance. It was surely rumors of the supernatural beauty of the springs that generated tales of the 'Fountain of Youth.' The sun was hot on my back through the wet lap of water and I hung belly down in the air-clear stream and looked at the bottom slipping by. Where the surface lay quiet, the deep places were some shade of blue, the current-washed bottom was snow white, and the rest of the basin was spread with polychrome gardens of half a dozen kinds of submerged water plants.Then an eddy swung me over a bed of stonewort and lying there on swept sand was the tooth of a mastodon. I worked back along the edge of the sluicing channel, dived, and grabbed the tooth and rode the current down to slack water.
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