Shell fusiformly ovate, solid, imperforate. Whorls ten, including nucleus. Nucleus two whorls, smooth, inflated, horn-colored. Spire, suture distinct, impressed, finely crenulated; whorls subconvex, with a groove at the junction of the upper and middle third, having a double row of granules just above it, and another row immediately below it. Numerous longitudinal wavy plicae, about as wide as the intervals, and not quite so high, rounded, about 25 in the penultimate whorl. Abundant fine spiral striae, 15 in the penultimate, crossing the plicae, and making them granose. Body-whorl subinflated, contracted at the base, sculpture in the upper part as in the spire ; longitudinal granose plicae, about 40, following the sinuosities of the outer lip, lost at the extreme base, and becoming less valid and more crowded towards the aperture, cut by transverse striae, which are irregularly alternately larger and smaller. Aperture oblique, elongate-ovate, constricted close to the suture. Outer lip thin, sharp, with a well-marked sinus, about three millimetres deep, with its centre 2.5 mm. from the suture, with the sides convex, and a concave bottom at the row of tiny nodules in front of the groove; a shallow anterior wide sinus just behind the notch of the canal. Canal very short, wide, open, notch rather large, oblique, its left border produced beyond the right; margins slightly everted. Columella straight, slight sinistral deviation anteriorly, smooth from removal of sculpture, callus very thin, applied, inconspicuous, barely free at the anterior extremity. Ornament greyish-white, with small deep rust-colored spots on the rows of granules just below the suture (sometimes continued from these as wavy longitudinal lines), and on the spiral row just below the groove of the sinus, and finer spiral lines of spots on alternate transverse rows of costal granules, over the body-whorl to the base. Aperture white. Operculum moderately large, elongate-ovate acute.
Length: 20 mm.; breadth: 8.25 mm.; aperture length: 10.25 mm; width: 3.25 mm.

Surcula quoyi Reeve is a larger shell, with the subsutural band not at all or scarcely nodulated, and with large nodules in the groove of the sinus, and no longitudinal costae. Surcula oweni Gray, has in the spire-whorls the sinus nodules immediately above the suture, instead of at or slightly above the centre of the whorls. The nodules are only half as numerous, 20 in the body-whorl instead of 40; its longitudinal plicae are very fine, and are just twice the number of the nodules.

South Australia. Off Thistle Island