APB Opinion No. 9 requires the inclusion and separate identification of extraordinary items in the income statement. Although the Opinion includes some examples to help distinguish from extraordinary items, the application of Opinion has not been uniform. What seems extraordinary to one company, may not seem to be so to another. Mr. Cumming's research attempts to explain apparent vagaries of accounting practice with respect to these items. His methodology included a search of published annual reports to identify instances in which apparently similar events were treated differently by different companies. His sample consisted of 754 corporations which were included in the Fortune 500 Industrials and/or Accounting Trends and Techniques. He lists three criteria for selecting these firms. First is the questionable contention that large firms set the standard for all. Second is the fact that a total of sixty-nine certified public accounting firms are represented in the sample, so that this research should reveal the treatment of unusual events over a broad cross-section of the public accounting profession (p. 62). He does not indicate, however, what proportion of these companies are represented by the Big Eight firms. I suspect that the real reason for the selection is stated in his third criterion: reports of these corporations are readily available. The real question in my mind, however, is whether the data necessary for explaining differences in accounting treatment are actually available. Companies that have treated an event as extraordinary have, by definition, disclosed fact. On the other hand, a company which elected to treat a similar event as ordinary probably did not disclose this. It may simply