Section 42
SEC. 42. The Governor-General, upon recommendation by the Secretary of Agriculture and Natural Resources, shall from time to time fix by proclamation the period within which applications for free patents may be filed in the district, province, municipality, or region specified in such proclamation, and upon the expiration of the period so designated, unless the same be extended by the Governor-General, all the land comprised within such district, province, municipality, or region subject thereto under the provisions of this chapter may be disposed of as agricultural public land, without prejudice to the prior right of the occupant and cultivator to acquire such land under this Act by means other than free patent. The time to be fixed in the entire Archipelago for the filing of applications under this chapter shall not extend beyond December thirty-first, nineteen hundred and twenty-eight. The period fixed for any district, province, or municipality shall begin to run thirty days after the publication of the proclamation in the Official Gazette. A certified copy of said proclamation shall be furnished to the Director of Lands and to the provincial board and the municipal board or council affected, and copies thereof shall be posted on the bulletin board of the Bureau of Lands at Manila and at conspicuous places in the provincial building and the municipal building. It shall, moreover, be announced by crier in each of the barrios of the municipality.