 <p>No, you can't do this - but you should look at using <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/1hsbd92d.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><code>ArraySegment</code></a> instead.</p> <p>Note that an array object consists of metadata about its length etc and then the data itself. You can't create a slice of an existing array and still have the metadata next to the data, if you see what I mean - there'd have to be an extra level of indirection (which is what <code>ArraySegment</code> provides).</p> <p>(I'm slightly surprised that ArraySegment doesn't do more wrapping, e.g. by implementing <code>IList&lt;T&gt;</code>, but there we go. It would be easy enough to create such a structure if you wanted to.)</p>