We have studied the glycoconjugates in trail mucus of the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. The mucus was dissolved with 6 M guanidinium hydrochloride (GuHCl) and the major component was comprised of very high-M(r) glycoconjugates that were eluted in the void volume of a Sepharose CL-4B gel-filtration column. This high-M(r) material was pooled and thereafter subjected to density gradient centrifugation first in 4 M GuHCl/CsCl and subsequently 0.2 M GuHCl/CsCl to further remove non-glycosylated proteins and DNA. The harvested glycoconjugate pool chromatographed in the void volume of Sepharose CL-2B. However, reduction of disulfide bonds lowered the molecular size of approximately 80% of the void material yielding a major fragment and some minor smaller fragments in gel chromatography. The reduced glycoconjugates were digested with papain and yielded high molecular weight, proteinase-resistant glycopeptides. This fragmentation pattern is similar to that found for oligomeric gel-forming mucins in mammals and the amino acid composition (60% Ser/Thr) and sugar analysis of the glycopeptides is consistent with mucin-like molecules, there being no significant amounts of xylose or uronic acids. The residual 20% of the preparation, which apparently resisted reduction and protease digestion, had a similar amino acid composition to the bulk, but was somewhat different in sugar composition, containing some xylose and a significant amount of glucuronic acid. The two groups of molecules had very different morphologies in the electron microscope. Taken together, these data suggest that trail mucus is a complex mixture of at least two families of protein-glycoconjugate molecules based upon the gel-forming mucin and proteoglycan families, though we cannot rule out that polysaccharides may also be present.