Shell broadly attenuate, stout, outlines almost straight, base concave, periphery angulate, narrowly rounded. Whorls 10, including a small polygyrate smooth protoconch of 3 whorls, the last with a median carina. Spire whorls sculptured with three main cords and a number of subsidiary ones having linear interspaces. The three main cords are placed—one at about four-fifths the height of the whorl and the other two close together at the lower extremity of the whorl. The subsidiary spirals are distributed—4 between suture
and upper cord, 9 between upper cord and uppermost of the two lower cords, and 3 between these two lower cords. There are 16 weak spiral threads on the base. Colour pale buff with a tesselated pattern of small squarish dots appearing in revolving series on the cords and threads, but arranged axially also in sinuous lines corresponding to the curve of the broad median apertural sinus.

Height, 14·4 mm.; diameter, 5·4 mm. (holotype).
Holotype in writer's collection, Auckland Museum.
Locality: Off Spirits Bay in 32 fathoms.

This is not merely a benthic form of rosea, for the arrangement of the spiral sculpture is quite different. Benthic examples of rosea cannot be separated from the typical shore form. Suter's difficilis from 50 fathoms off the Snares has been synonymised with rosea by Finlay, 1926 (Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. 57, p. 389).