Hi sysadv,
This is a normal behaviour. The * gets resolved as arguments before the command is interpeted. So therefor (you'll probably have lots of jpg-files) the cp errors of; too many arguments.
Another remark is to not use the . This is something Windows alike. A dot in Unix has a different meaning, therefor I would suggest to try the following :
for i in `ls *jpg`
do
cp $i <dest-dir>
echo "Copy of $i was succesfull"
done
If this also does not work than do a man on "xargs"!! This can be your only solution then. I don't know the exact syntax, but man does
Regs David