The question is, what did a Leporine look like?
Charles Darwin cataloged them, but his record gives little information
to form a mental picture of a Leporine. There are a few
sketches remaining of the Leporine of the mid 1800, but the art of
photography was not advanced enough at the time to produce of
definitive record. However, we can get an idea of their
appearance if we examine the
descriptions provided by P.E. Crabtree and printed in the "First
Belgian Hare Course of Instruction" (reprinted in the February 1994
Issue of the ABHC newsletter, the "Spotlight").Mr. Crabtree experienced the "Great Belgian Hare Boom" of the early 1900s. In his article, he provided two descriptions of rabbits imported from Belgium and represented as "Belgian Hares" which he contended were really Leporines.
In the first case Mr. Crabtree described animals represented as Belgian Hares that one of his Boston pupils bought in January 1901 that were actually Leporine. "In body color, they were distinguishable at a glance from a Belgian , being of a light grayish cinnamon color, with little or nothing of the true rufus red, and having little or no body ticking, and almost no ear lacing. There were some black in their fur, but it was not ticking, which is the black end of the hairs, but rather the middle of the hairs, and nothing like what the standard calls for. By condensing the fur between the hands, it is easy to see that an animal of this description has no ticking, for the condensed patch of fur shows no black as it always does in the case of a Belgian with true ticking."
In the second case, Mr. Crabtree described another instance of
rabbits
imported by a San Diego breeder in 1900 that also was represented as
"Belgian
Hares." Mr. Crabtree wrote, ".......they proved to be the Leporine,
being
a cross between a Flemish Giant and a Belgian. They were of a dull
grayish
color with ticking on their front feet clear down to their toenails and
would not score either as Flemish Giants or Belgian Hares. I advised
the
importer to advertise them as Leporine. I know that quite a number of
these
Leporine have come over from Belgium, and purchasers of Belgian Hares
should be on their guard lest they are deceived by ignorant breeders".