OSBORN, Sherard (1822—1875), English admiral and explorer, was the son of Lieutenant-Colonel Osborn of the Madras army, and was born 25th April 1822. Entering the navy as a first-class volunteer in 1837, he was in the following year entrusted, though only a midshipman, with the command of a gunboat, the “Emerald,” at the attack on Kedah. He was present at the reduction of Canton in 1841, and at the capture of the batteries of Woosung in the following year. Having passed lieutenant in 1844, he was in the same year appointed gunnery mate of the “Collingwood,” under Sir George Seymour in the Pacific. On account of his interest in the fate of many of his friends and messmates, he took a prominent part in advocating a new search expedition for Sir John Franklin. When it was agreed upon he was appointed to the command of one of the ships, and performed a remarkable sledge journey to the western extremity of Prince of Wales Island, of which he published an account entitled Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal, 1852. In the new expedition fitted out in the spring of that year he also took part as commander of the “Pioneer,” and, after spending two trying winters up Wellington Channel, returned home in 1855. In 1856 he published the journals of Robert M i Clure, giving a narrative of the discovery of the North-West Passage. Shortly after his return he was called to active service in connexion with the Russian war; and in command of a light squadron of gunboats on the Sea of Azoff he distinguished himself in the destruction of the stores of the enemy at various points on the coast. Receiving post rank, he was appointed to the “Medusa,” in which he continued to command the Sea of Azoff squadron until the conclusion of peace. As commander of the “Furious” he ...

OSCANS, or Opicans, was the name given both by Greeks and Romans to one of the ancient nations of central Italy. There can be no doubt that the original form of the name was Opscus, which, as we learn from Festus, was still used by Ennius. This the Greeks softened into Opicus, while the Latin writers always used Oscus as a national appellation, though they occasionally employ the term “opicus” in the sense of barbarous or ignorant. It is singular that, though there can be no doubt the name was a national one, it is not found in history as the name of any particular nation. No mention occurs of the Oscans among the populations of Italy that were successively reduced by the Roman arms; but we learn incidentally from a passage in Livy (x. 20) that the language of the Samnites and Campanians was Oscan; and it is certain that this continued to be the vernacular tongue of the people of Italy until long after the Roman conquest. Of the ethnical affinities or origin of the Oscans we know nothing, except what may be gathered philologically from the remains of their language; and their relations with the Samnites and other Sabellian tribes, whom we find during the historical period settled in this part of Italy, are extremely obscure. Perhaps the most plausible theory is that they were in very early times the inhabitants of the regions subsequently occupied by a race of invaders from the north, who were known as Sabines, Samnites, and Sabellians, but who, being comparatively few in numbers, and in an inferior stage of civilization, gradually adopted the language of the conquered race (see Italy, vol. xiii. p. 445)....