"clone" at active_record relation

inside Rails source, at

I found a lot of calls to:

    relation = clone

I can understand where id the "relation" call, but... how about "clone" ? Perhaps "clone" comes from Ruby1.9-Kernel, but I am not sure. And github color it in blue, like a class...weird...

    def where(opts, *rest)       relation = clone

      if opts.present? && value = build_where(opts, rest)         relation.where_values += Array.wrap(value)       end

      relation     end

Can somebody explain this "clone" ? Where it come from ? Thanks