« Very small, high and conical, pointed, pale sandy-coloured, reticulated, bicarinated, with a small rounded tip, short convex whorls, an impressed suture, a small short flatly conical base, and a small round mouth. Sculpture: Longitudinals – there are from 10 to 15 small narrow slightly arched riblets, wich above at the suture and on the base are barely visible, but rise into little sharpish tubercles on crossing the spiral threads […] in the full-grown shell one or two of these riblets swell into varices, which appear on the base. Spirals – there are on each whorl two fine rounded threadlets[…] parted by a shallow flat interval of nearly double their width; above these the conical sloping shoulder of each whorl ahs only the feeblest trace of one or two spirals, of which one may be seen just below the suture… » – R. B. Watson: “Report on the Scaphopoda and Gasteropoda collected by H.M.S. Challenger during the Years 1873-1876”, Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873–76 Zoology part XLII, London 1886, p.555. Above, the species plate XXXVIII fig.4.

« …below the periphery are two rather sharper but untubercled spirals, of which the upper lies at the insertion of the outer lip, and can be seen in the suture all up the spire; these two basal spirals are parted by a small shallow square-cut furrow; within these spirals the base is flatly conical, slightly marked with radiating lines of growth, and occasionally with two very faint spiral threads close in to the pillar. Colour white, or sandy, with a tinge of chestnut toward the tip. » – Ibid. In fact, the strength of the spirals and of the knobs can vary greatly, so that the general appearance of the sculpture can be clathrate as well as tuberculate. Columellar area usually brownish.