Let's say I have two classes A and B, with B a subtype of A. This is only part of a richer type hierarchy, obviously, but I don't think that's relevant. Assume A is the root of the hierarchy. There is a collection class C that keeps track of a list of A's. However, I want to make C generic, so that it is possible to make an instance that only keeps B's and won't accept A's. class A(val c: C[A]) { c.addEntry(this) } class B(c: C[A]) extends A(c) class C[T <: A]{ val entries = new ArrayBuffer[T]() def addEntry(e: T) { entries += e } } object Generic { def main(args : Array[String]) { val c = new C[B]() new B(c) } } The code above obviously give the error 'type mismatch: found C[B], required C[A]' on the new B(c) line. I'm not sure how this can be fixed. It's not possible to make C covariant in T (like C[+T <: A]) because the ArrayBuffer is non-variantly typed in T. It's not possible to make the constructor of B require a C[B] because C can't be covariant. Am I barking up the wrong tree here? I'm a complete Scala newbie, so any ideas and tips might be helpful. Thank you! EDIT: Basically, what I'd like to have is that the compiler accepts both val c = new C[B]() new B(c) and val c = new C[A]() new B(c) but would reject val c = new C[B]() new A(c) It's probably possible to relax the typing of the ArrayBuffer in C to be A instead of T, and thus in the addEntry method as well, if that helps.