The shell is remarkable for its peculiar glistening white outer layer, with which is most beautifully contrasted the pale cinnamon interior.

Shell large, 54-59 mm. (2-2,25 inches) in height, light build, elongate-fusiform, with tall attenuated turreted spire and capacious body-whorl contracted to a rather short slightly flexed spout-like unnotched anterior canal. Whorls 10-11 but nucleus eroded away. Spire taller than height of aperture plus canal, weakly angulated below the middle of whorl height. Sculpture of protractively flexuous fold-like axials, extending from just above the shoulder angle to the lower suture, about 12 per whorl. Both the peripheral angle and the axials become subobsolete over the body-whorl. The whole surface crowded with wavy spirals, 7-8 threads on the shoulder slope and about 6 cords between the periphery and the lower suture; cords continue, closely spaced, over the body-whorl and neck, but the weak anterior fasciole is plain. Sinus shallow, broadly arcuate, confluent in a sigmoid curve with a moderate forward projection of the thin outer lip. The highly glazed inner-lip callus bears a very weak, scarcely apparent, entering plication, situated above the middle and well within the aperture. Suture irregularly undulated. Colour dull white, covered by a very thin pale olivaceous periostracum. Operculum small, oval, with a terminal nucleus.

This species and the closely allied Pleurotoma (Surcula) subcorpulenta (Smith, 1894) are large shells of light build, with angulate axially plicate spire-whorls, but upon approach¬ing maturity, the whorls tend to become more roundly inflated, and the axials and carina to become subobsolete. The operculum is small, al¬most to the point of being vestigial, and is oval to leaf-shaped with a terminal nucleus. The sinus is broad and shallow, occupying the whole of the shoulder slope. The presence of a faint entering plication within the inner-lip callus, suggests that these shells may be better placed in the Borsoniinae, but the significance of such weak plications is as yet not clearly understood. For the present only those species with well developed columellar plications are grouped in the Borsoniinae.
The Malayan specimen, here ascribed to this species, has a taller, more slender spire than in the Indian type specimen, but too few examples are available to even decide if subcorpulenta is really distinct, a point about which Smith (I.e.) had some doubts.

Off southern India, 1043 fathoms, and Malaya, 700 fathoms.