The University--consisting of the Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor, Doctors in the several faculties, and Masters of Arts--having been governed for more than two hundred years by certain rules or Statutes which had, by lapse of time, become in many respects obsolete and unsuited to the present state of the University, and doubts having been raised as to whether the Provost and Senior Fellows of the College had the power to alter or amend these rules, Letters Patent were asked for and granted by the Crown (July 24, 1857), confirming all former powers, usages, and privileges, giving the Board power to make laws concerning the conferring of Degrees, provided that such laws should be afterwards confirmed by the University Senate, enacting that no “grace” should be proposed to that body which had not been first adopted by the Board; incorporating the University Senate under the name of the Chancellor, Masters, and Doctors of the University of Dublin, and giving the Senate power to elect the Chancellor from three names to be submitted to them by the Board, who relinquished their old right in this respect. Further Letters Patent were obtained in 1858, which enabled the Board to commute the fees of certain offices for lesser salaries, and to forego fees hitherto payable to them for Degrees which were in future to be applied to the benefit of the College; and out of the funds so transferred fourteen Studentships were founded, at a salary of £100 per annum for each, tenable for seven years, to be given every year at the Degree Examination; two new offices (Senior Tutorships), to be held by Junior Fellows, were created; two of the Non-Tutor Fellowships were merged among the Tutor Fellowships, and the remaining four were gradually discontinued. The Board was given power to sanction new rules for the distribution of the tutorial fees, and a clause was added enabling candidates for Fellowships to attend only on the days on which the courses in which they compete are examined in, and giving other powers to the Board. In conformity with the powers granted to the Board by the Letters Patent of 1857, in December of the following year they remodelled, with the approval of the Senate, all the University rules with respect to Degrees. Further Letters Patent were obtained in 1865, rectifying defects in the existing Statutes, specially with respect to the examination for Fellowships, and in 1868 for the creation of a Regius Professor of Surgery. In 1870 the Provost and Senior Fellows founded a Professor of Latin, under the same regulations which prevailed with regard to the Professor of Greek; and at the same time they founded forty Exhibitions of £25 each, tenable for two years, twenty Senior and twenty Junior, to aid deserving students in the prosecution of their undergraduate course. In 1871 the Professorships of Ancient History and of Zoology were founded, and in 1872 a Professorship of Comparative Anatomy.