Protected access for finalize and clone methods..

In the Object class, why are only the methods clone and finlaize have protected access ?
My understanding for providing the protected access modifier is to provide visibility for subclasses in different packages.
java.lang package is available by default and all classes extend the Object by default.

Hi Rekha,
'protected' does give access to subclasses in other packages BUT only if the subclass participates in the creation of the protected object.
The two methods are protected to prevent any subclass of Object from calling them; they must be called from a direct subclass of the original object.
For example, if you have a ClassA object and a ClassB object, both of which implicitly inherit from Object you can't, from within ClassB call aObj.clone(). However, if ClassC is a direct subclass of ClassA then a ClassC object can invoke aObj.clone()
Hope that makes sense.
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Jane Griscti
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java� 2 Platform
Co-author Mike Meyers' Java 2 Certification Passport