In school days, I found often shells of snails stuck to the stems of bushy plants. I thought they are the shells of dead snails. Then, I tried hardly to remove one of them from the plant's stem till it give in. On inspection of its mouth I found a white paper-like structure closing it. I pierced it with a stick to strip it off. To my surprise there was the snail still alive, retracting itself further into the shell! This snail is the Vineyard Snail (Cernuella virgata or Hellicella virgata , 'Natthai' in Tamil).
