I have found it difficult by syringing, as it has great power of resisting and throwing off moisture, and if but a very few are left living, it is astonishing how quickly it redistributes itself.
"Fungi: Their Nature and Uses"
Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
We think of something in the organic that lifts and moves and redistributes dead matter, and builds it up into the ten thousand new forms which it would never assume without this something; it lifts lime and iron and silica and potash and carbon, against gravity, up into trees and animal forms, not by a new force, but by an old force in the hands of a new agent.
"The Breath of Life"
John Burroughs