I see what you're saying Jelle Klap in the Java 7 Documentation and I also see what your saying about the super variants in InputStream not being "called".
I should have said, Stuart, that I was looking at
FileInputStream in Android documentation - (I'm experimenting with Android). In this documentation, it seems to say that int read(byte[] buffer) is inherited and not overridden.
Or so it would seem. A difference between Oracle Java and Android Java, maybe.
But I think I get the picture.