cgi and inheritance

I=92ve recently inherited some code that hasn=92t been touched in over 5 ye=
ars. It=92s all cgi and OOPerl.
I=92ve ran across this one statement that I don=92t understand.

$self->log->error(*)

I know the self
and I=92ve traced the error to CGI::Application through inheritance.
But it=92s the ->log-> that has me confused.
I have no class named log
I find no place that is does a new on log anywhere in the family tree.
I cannot find any log class anywhere in the family tree of inheritance.

Is this just a method of using a perl hash that I=92m not familiar with?
Could it be rewritten as=20
$self->{=91log=92}->error(*);

Using perl 5.16.2
on MAC 10.9.5=