Visual Basic provides the Control class as a generic variable type for controls. When you declare a variable As Control, you can assign it a reference to any control. You cannot create an instance of the Control class.
Note Accessing properties and methods of a control is faster if you use a variable declared with the same type as the control (for example, As TreeView or As CommandButton), because Visual Basic can use early binding. Visual Basic must use late binding to access properties and methods of a control assigned to a variable declared As Control.