  Under the merger hypothesis, elliptical galaxies are built through mergers of
gas-rich spirals. However, the relative paucity of HI in most normal
ellipticals demands significant processing of atomic gas into other forms if
this process is to be viable. Here I present a few qualitative remarks on how
the properties of merger-spawned ellipticals might depend on the (evolving) gas
content of the progenitor disks, then turn to a more quantitative study of the
constraints provided by the nuclear properties of ellipticals and merger
remnants.
