If you say: person.propertyItems() In an external method, you get ONLY the properties of person, not any properties that person "inherits" by acquisition. How do you access the "inherited" properties? Thanks. Most current information can be found at: http://www.mindview.net/Etc/notes.html =================== Bruce Eckel http://www.BruceEckel.com Contains free electronic books: "Thinking in Java 2e" & "Thinking in C++ 2e" Please subscribe to my free newsletter -- just send any email to: join-eckel-oo-programming@earth.lyris.net My schedule can be found at: http://www.mindview.net/Calendar ===================