The clocks go back tonight, and the first person to propose moving them on purpose was looking for insects. George Hudson was a post office clerk in Wellington whose shifts left him time to collect, and whose shifts had also taught him what an hour of daylight was worth. In October 1895 he told the Wellington Philosophical Society that New Zealand should move its clocks two hours every summer. A number of the members laughed. He lived to see a smaller version of it tried. What I like is how little the scheme asked of the insects, who went on keeping the sun’s hours and were never told. All he wanted was to be out when they were, and it turned out the easiest way to change one man’s evening was to change everybody’s.