Discovering Classes and Objects - Beginning Java 7 - page 117

Object isJava'sultimatesuperclassbecauseitservesastheancestorofeveryother
class, but does not itself extend any other class. Object provides a common set of
methods that other classes inherit. Table 2-1 describes these methods.
I will discuss the clone() , equals() , finalize() , hashCode() , and
toString() methodsshortly,butdeferadiscussionof getClass() , notify() ,
notifyAll() , and the wait() methods to Chapter 4 .