Developing eggs of a Lymneae snail. These were laid by some pet snails of mine. I removed the eggs because the snails live in a medium/small clear plastic deli-cup and the eggs, if allowed to hatch, would have likely led to a fowling of the water (& thus the likely demise of the plants & eventually the snails. It happened once before when they were in a large plastic animal tank, but I disposed of the contents of the tank before the adult snails died too. They're now healthy & happy in their new, if much smaller, home.) The eggs are, for the mean time, in a plastic petri dish of water. I took a few & placed them under my slide microscope to see the embryos inside. What I saw was what you see here (taken using my digital camera*). The embryos are either in or just past their 'trochophore' (pronounced 'trock-oh-fore') stage of development. It's this embryonic stage that links the mollusks together with the annelids (earthworms, leeches, and their kin), who also have this developmental stage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trochophore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lophotrochozoa Sorry but I forget what magnification this was on at the time. :C *All I did to film this was place the lens of my camera up to the eye-piece of the microscope (the camera flash must be turned off for photographs). That simple!