The _Times_ says that the Home Secretary said "serious experiments." Mr. Coleridge says that _Hansard_ says that the Home Secretary said "serious operations." We need not doubt that Mr. Coleridge is right; but we may doubt whether Hansard underlines the word _wholly_, as Mr. Coleridge does. Anyhow, it does not matter now whether the Home Secretary, seven years ago, said _experiments_ or _operations_. His meaning is clear enough; that, in all serious procedures, whether they be under Certificate A or under Certificate B, a limit is put to the number of experiments. Which is the plain truth, as everybody knows who is concerned in the administration of the Act; and the limit may be very strict indeed. After this statement by the Home Secretary in 1899, we still find Dr. Abiathar Wall, the Hon. Treasurer of the London Anti-vivisection Society, saying in 1900 that a _vivisector has only to say that he has a theory whereby he hopes to discover a cure for, say, neuralgia of the little finger, and the Home Secretary promptly arms him with a license to torture as diabolically as he pleases and as many animals as he deems fit_. And the National Society has made constant use of this phrase about "serious experiments"; declaring that the Home Secretary himself has said that animals are tortured under the Act. Here are three statements to that effect, made by the National Society's Parliamentary Secretary, by its Lecturer, and by its Hon. Secretary:-- 1. (Annual Meeting, Queen's Hall, May 1900.)--"If you are still unconvinced--if any one is not thoroughly satisfied that there is ample cause for the anti-vivisectionist movement to-day--it is only necessary for me to refer you to the words of the Home Secretary, as spoken in Parliament, in the year 1898.[49] He said: 'There are serious operations which are performed, during which the use of anæsthetics is wholly or partially dispensed with.' Could there be any more sweeping indictment than that? Is there any need for me to attempt to convince you that the lower animals are vivisected painfully, after the words officially spoken by the Home Secretary in the House of Commons?" 2. "If you want any further proof I will quote from Hansard, July 24th, 1899, when the then Home Secretary stated in the House of Commons that serious experiments take place under the law of England, in which the use of anæsthetics is wholly or partially dispensed with. Now, I affirm that serious experiments in which anæsthetics are wholly or partially dispensed with mean torture pure and simple."