The radii are generally snow-white, or freckled with a bright mahogany tint, or rarely clouded with purple, or in the pink varieties with pink. The scuta are dull purple or pink, generally with a white band along their tergal margin; often, however, they are white, with merely one or two purple fasciæ. The thickness or strength of the shells varies much; some specimens attached to a floating cane, from Natal and the Philippine Archipelago, were extremely strong; others, from the Mediterranean and Australia, and some tubular varieties from the West Indies, were very thin, translucent, and fragile. _Size_: large specimens generally attain a diameter of from half to three quarters of an inch in basal diameter; and I have seen one or two specimens an inch in diameter. _Scutum_; sometimes the surface is very smooth, but generally the growth-ridges are moderately prominent; the latter are occasionally very finely beaded, and this seems always the case with _var. cirratus_. Internally, the articular ridge is prominent and reflexed: the adductor ridge is sharp, very prominent, and straight; it runs parallel to the occludent margin; close to its lower side there is often a depression (Pl. 5, fig. 2 _i_), sometimes bounded by a slight ridge, as if for the attachment of a muscle, but there certainly is no muscle here: rarely the adductor ridge is only slightly prominent: there is a small and shallow little pit of variable depth for the lateral depressor muscle.