Ivor Horton's Beginning Java™ 2, JDK™ 5th Edition

6.2. Class Inheritance

In summary, when you derive a new class from a base class, the process is additive in terms of what makes up a class definition. The additional members that you define in the new class establish what makes a derived class object different from a base class object. Any members that you define in the new class are in addition to those that are already members of the base class. For your Spaniel class that you derived from Dog, the data members to hold the name and the breed that are defined for the class Dog would automatically be in the class Spaniel. A Spaniel object will always have a complete Dog object inside it—with all its data members and methods. This does not mean that all the members defined in the Dog class are available to methods that are specific to the Spaniel class. Some are and some aren't. The inclusion of members of a base class in a derived class so that they are accessible in that derived class is called class inheritance. An inherited member of a base class is one that is accessible within the derived class. If a base class member is not accessible in a derived class, then it is not an inherited member of the derived class, but base class members that are not inherited still form part of a derived class object.

An inherited member of a derived class is a full member of that class and is freely accessible to any method in the class. Objects of the derived class type will contain all the inherited members of the base class—both fields ...