byte) but nor does it guarantee
            that all operations will work in such cases.
            
               [root] -+- foo -+- bar
                       |       |
                       |       +- baz
                       |
                       +- bar --- baz
             
            
             
            This delegates most behavior to the
            
            Most applications will never need to create their own instances of this type;
            instead, use the static