Ahhh ja. ::)

not it comes clearer.

This is the differnce of a property holding an object to an object contained in an other object. ::)

You need to understand that "protected" is description how to handle the object. Methods and Properties are owned by the object so they inhertit "protected".

Agnes
>>That's true - I agree that this could be seen in this way - but it looks like a kind >of philosophical issue to me. To prove the "common"-way of handling this - I created a >C#-sample which shows that C# (I now found a real application for .NET for me ! ;-)) >handles the same issue in the way I would expect it...
>
>Ok ok - it is not the same issue - it is just a protected property holding an object ref which behaves in the same way vfp does.