The Administration is however authorised, with power of countermand and under necessary precautions to permit sums up to 20 florins of which notice has been given to be immediately paid at one of the authorised receiving offices without waiting for the arrival of the foregoing assignment from the Post Office Savings Bank. ARTICLE 14. If a deposit-book proves to be lost the following proceedings occur: The owner has, in order to obtain a duplicate to give immediate notice of the loss, either directly to the Post Office Savings Bank, or to the nearest receiving office (Post Office) with as exact an account as possible of its characteristic marks. The Post Office Savings Bank immediately orders a note of the characteristic marks to be entered in its books with the result that meanwhile no payment is made to anyone on the lost deposit-book. At the same time the Post Office Savings Bank causes a public placard to be put up at the Post Office where the lost book was issued, and also in that to which perhaps it might be forwarded, by which all persons are informed that at the expiration of a month from the date of its publication, if no claim to the lost book is made in the interval, it will be cancelled and declared null and void, and a new one issued. If within the month no claim is made, the Post Office Savings Bank will on payment of a fee of 10 kreutzers Austrian currency, issue a duplicate and declare the deposit-book proved lost, to be null and void. If a claim is made during the course of a month, the Post Office Savings Bank must refer the parties to the ordinary tribunals, and no duplicate is to be issued nor any proceedings permitted with reference to the lost book until the validity of the outstanding claim has been decided by a legal judgement. ARTICLE 15. The statement of paragraph 1480 of the General Civil Code, by which claims to arrears of interests are lost after three years, has no application to interests of depositors in the Post Office Savings Bank. In relation to the lapse of Post Office Savings Bank deposits the ordinary legal decisions will be relied upon. Lapsed deposits fall into the postal treasury. Such a lapsing of deposits will be stopped by every new payment, every notice for payment back, every entry of interest in the deposit book. ARTICLE 16. State bonds bought officially, or at the request of depositors, and kept at the Post Office Savings Bank fall into the postal treasury, if, during a lapse of 40 years, no one has laid claim either to the deposit or to the interest, and the depositor has not forwarded to the Post Office Savings Bank any order whatever with reference to them. ARTICLE 17. Neither savings deposited at the Post Office Savings Bank, nor the Post Office Savings Bank deposit-books can be sequestered, and in like manner they cannot be used as security. Nor can a deposit-book be seized or taken in distraint.