Evidently some of the readers of The Star questioned the veracity of the article printed yesterday regarding the salvager sucker, the queer fish which Mr. I. Zack W. Alton claims to have discovered in the waters of Puget sound. Below is published a letter we received from one reader. Prof. Humpback, In which he takes us severely to task. By It understood right now that The Star vouches for none of these fish stories. We are not experts in things aquatic, we'll confess right now. Our readers must take them for what they are worth.
    Appended, also, is a letter we received today from another reader calling our attention to another strange and rare creature of the seas the cable cleaning croppie. Together with Vic's sketch of the croppie, drawn from Mr. Donnerwetter's description:

      Editor The Star: You printed a letter yesterday from I. Zack W. Alton, who stated that a species of fish called “salvager sucker” existed in Puget sound. Mr. Alton said these fish could be found only at Discovery bay.
    Now, I have devoted my life to the study of fish, their life, habits and customs. I have studied fish in the tropics, in the Arctic regions and in Europe. And in all my life I never heard of a salvager sucker.
    It is impossible that salvager suckers are used in pearl hunting in the South Seas. Pearls are found in certain oysters and shell fish, and these are dug out of the sands and mud.
    If such a fish as a salvager existed in Puget sound It would undoubtedly be known to everyone in Seattle. I, as an authority on the subject of fish, would certainly have heard of it.
    I have spent much of my time with Puget sound fishermen, and I have never heard any of them mention the name of “salvager,” even as a mythical being.
    Mr. Alton states that the salvager, which is only two feet long, can lift a weight of two tons. This is quite impossible. An ant, the strongest animal for its size known, cannot lift more than three times its own weight. How could a two-foot fish, weighing probably 15 pounds, lift an object weighing two tons?
    That any kind of a fish could be trained in rescue work is impossible. That a salvager could be taught to know the difference between a rock and a sack of coal, or a brick and a box of cigars, is ridiculous.
    Mr. Alton seemed so honest and concert in his statements about this extraordinary fish that I am loath to cast any reflection upon his truthfulness and honesty. But I consider it only fair to the public to say that without the slightest doubt I consider Mr. Alton grossly misinformed.
    “Of course you, as a wise editor, know all about the salvager sucker.” Yes, Mr. Editor, you must be a wise one to believe all that Mr. Alton told you in his letter.

HENRY HUMPBACK.
Professor of Ichthyology. U. of W.

    Editor The Star: I read with great interest the letter in yesterday’s Star about the salvage sucker, not that I agree with Mr. Alton as to the value of this fish, but because it is good to see that someone is taking interest in the rare piscatorial friends of man to be found right here in Puget sound.
    But why boost the “sal sucker” ahead or the cable cleaning croppie, which is of so much service to the Vashon island residents, in keeping lines of communication open?
    It is possible, or course, that people outside the telephone and telegraph companies may not know of this fish. It lives on little barnacles of a type that fasten themselves to cables. As you know, the bottom of Puget sound is very uneven, and were it not for the cable cleaning croppie the cables would be so encrusted with barnacles, where they hang from one ledge to the next, that they would break. In fact, this is just what happened until the phone men heard about the croppie, which is a native of Salmon bay, where it lived on a similar barnacle that fastens itself to the keel of halibut boats. By importing several and planting them in the vicinity of the cables connecting the islands the linemen put an end to the breakage.
    The croppie has a little wheel-like piece of cartilage on the end of a streamer attached to its. back. Its eyes are luminous and cast a light upward, so that the croppie can see barnacles attached to the cable, which it knocks loose with the chisel-like beak protruding from its forehead.
    A long tendril with a claw on the end protruding from its upper lip enables it to pick the meat out of the barnacle. One croppie will keep two miles of cable clean.
    Yours in the interest of a city aquarium in which the public may see the rare fish of Puget sound.

OSCAR DONNERWETTER.
West Seattle.