Dynamic and static light scattering measurements were made on high molecular weight, high purity hyaluronate from bacteria (BHA) and medium purity hyaluronate from cock's comb (CCHA), and proteoglycan monomers (PGM) from bovine nasal cartilage over a wide range of ionic strengths Cs, and solution concentrations Cp. BHA exhibited clear polyelectrolyte properties. Apparent persistence lengths within the wormlike chain model in the coil limit were estimated as a function of Cs. The total apparent persistence length varied from about 87A in the high Cs limit to nearly 400A at 1mM added NaCl. The apparent electrostatic persistence length varied approximately as Cs$\sp{-1/2}.$ Deviations from the theoretically predicted Cs$\sp{-1}$ dependence were investigated in terms of excluded volume effects. Dynamic light scattering yielded 'ordinary phase' diffusion coefficients whose dependence on Cp and Cs agreed reasonably well with hydrodynamic coupled mode theory in the linear limit. There was no evidence of an 'extraordinary phase' at low Cs for BHA. The overall results for medium purity CCHA are contrasted with those for BHA, the residual protein impurity $(\cong$0.7%) is thought to be source of the drastic difference in light scattering properties of the two hyaluronate. Clear peaks in the angular scattering intensity curve I(q), which moved towards higher scattering wave numbers q, as Cp$\sp{1/3}$ were found for PGM. This differs from Cp$\sp{1/2}$ dependence of scattering peaks found by neutron scattering from more concentrated polyelectrolyte solutions. There was evidence of simultaneous 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' phases for PGM at low Cs. However, the 'extraordinary' phase was 'removable' by filtering. At higher Cs the PGM appear to behave as random non-free draining polyelectrolyte coils, with a near constant ratio of 0.67 between hydrodynamic radius and radius of gyration. The apparent persistence length varied as roughly Cs$\sp{-1/2}$ similar to various linear synthetic and biological polyelectrolytes. Electrostatic excluded volume theory accounted well for the dependence of A$\sb2$ on Cs. HA and oppositely charged polycations form large aggregates and a conformational change, from random coil to sphere, was found. PG-HA did form aggregate in the presence of link protein and no conformation change was observed. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)