  Much of the far-UV emission from elliptical galaxies is thought to arise from
extreme horizontal branch stars and related objects. Only about 10% of the
stellar population needs to evolve through this phase even in galaxies with the
strongest UV upturn. However it is not yet clear if this population represents
the extreme low-metallicity or high-metallicty tail of the distribution, or
rather arises from the overall population through some metallicity-insensitive
mechanism that causes increased mass loss in a small fraction of RGB stars. We
investigate the utility of far-UV line strengths for deciding between these
possiblities. Complications include the fact that the line strengths reflect
both the temperature distribution and the metallicity distribution of the
stars, that there may be abundance anomalies introduced on the RGB, and that
metals are likely to be redistributed by gravitational settling and radiative
diffusion in the atmospheres of hot high-gravity stars. Line-strength
measurements from Astro-2 HUT spectra are considered in this context.
