Shell small, globose-conic, solid, thick, imperforate when adult. Sculpture consisting of spiral granose lirae, the interstices narrow ; there are 7 or 8 equal lirae on the penultimate whorl, 10 on the body-whorl. Colour brownish or bluish-black ; " dead shells " are pink, varied with darker. Spire short, conic, very little higher than the aperture ; outlines convex. Protoconch small, depressed, of 1,5 whorls, the first whorl smooth, the following half with 2 granose keels. Whorls 5, convex, the last globose, descending in front ; base convex. Suture canaliculate. Aperture rounded, Urate inside and nacreous with steel-blue and dark-red reflections. Outer lip convex, thick, denticulate, with a strongly wrinkled callosity inside. Columella concave, terminating in a tooth, below which there is a narrow notch, and another tubercle or tooth on the basal lip equal in size to the columellar denticle ; very often there is a second notch, followed by a smaller tubercle. There is a groove at the place of the umbilicus. Diameter, 6,5 mm. ; height, 6,5 mm.
New Zealand: Chatham Islands (type) ; Bay of Islands to Cook Strait, under stones near low-water mark.
Remarks.—This shell is mostly covered by a scarlet-coloured sponge. There is nothing to separate Kirk's species from E. bellus. Hutton founded the species on “ dead shells " from the Chathams, in which the nacre of the aperture had been lost. I have compared the types of the two species, and there is absolutely nothing to separate them.