  The restframe mid-ultraviolet spectral region (2000-3200 A) is important in
analyzing the stellar populations of the "red envelope" systems observed at
high redshifts. Here, we explore the usefulness of the mid-UV for determining
ages and abundances of old populations. A mid-UV to optical/IR wavelength
baseline provides good separation of population components because the main
sequence turnoff dominates the integrated light between 2500 and 4000 A. We
find a six magnitude difference in the mid-UV continuum level over the
metallicity range -1.5 < log Z/Z_o < +0.5 and a comparable difference (per unit
log t) for ages in the range 4-16 Gyr. Logarithmic derivatives of mid-UV colors
with respect to age or metal abundance are 3-10 times larger than for the UBV
region. Most of the spectral information on old populations therefore resides
below 4000 A. We investigate the capability of UBV and mid-UV broad-band colors
to separately determine age and abundance, taking into account precision in the
color measurements. We find that the mid-UV improves resolution in (log t,log
Z) space by about a factor of 3 for a given observational precision.
Contamination by hot horizontal branch phases can seriously affect mid-UV
spectra, reaching over 80% in some cases. However, this is straightforward to
remove as long as far-UV measurements are available. Finally, we show that a 4
Gyr, solar abundance model based on empirical spectra provides an excellent fit
to the mid-UV spectrum of the E galaxy M32. This indicates that the poorer
results obtained from theoretical spectra arise from limitations of the
synthesis models for individual stars. [Condensed]
